The Top Sleep Gadgets To Improve Your Health

Does your brain automatically go to “sleep gadgets” when you think about optimizing your health? Most, often, when we think about optimizing our health we often go to diet and exercise first. But there is another very important (and often neglected) factor that, if left unchecked, can negate any progress you may be making in other areas of your health. Getting your zzzz’s!

This is where sleep gadgets and tools come in. We now have access to sleep activity trackers and apps that are like having a sleep technologist right in your room!

So if you want to uplevel your health, start with your sleep. If you’re not sleeping enough or well enough, your quality of life can be impacted. Quality sleep is critical for physical, mental, and emotional health—both in the short term and the long term.

Your body needs sleep to reset, restore, and repair. It takes this time to form neural pathways that are critical for information retention, memories, critical thinking, cognitive function and regulation of emotions and behavior.

Your body also needs sleep to keep your blood, hormones, and organs healthy. For example, sleep is necessary to heal and repair your blood vessels; failing to do so can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, and increased risk of stroke. A lack of sleep is also linked to a risk of obesity and weight-related health problems.

Sleep interacts with your daily life as well. Without rest, you’ll be unproductive, unfocused, and unmotivated, which can quickly disrupt every area of your life, from your career to your personal relationships.

Studies show that just ONE night of poor sleep can alter your DNA, change genetic expression and negatively impact your health. You can read more about the importance and role of sleep here.

With the accessibility of new tech at your fingertips, you can now find all the sleep help you need. Let’s explore some of the latest and cutting edge sleep gadgets to optimize your health.

Track your sleep

Most men think they are getting good sleep. But sleep doesn’t just mean ‘8 hours’.

It’s not all about the number of hours slept, but the quality and depth of that sleep as well. Understanding the quality of sleep is critical to improving your health. So how do you know you’re actually getting good sleep if you aren’t tracking it?

In order to make adjustments that will improve your sleep, you need to first understand how you’re currently sleeping. And this is why tracking your sleep is so critical. Did you know one week of “poor sleep” can decrease testosterone levels by as much as 15%?!!

Tracking your sleep helps you understand not just how long you sleep, but also the quality of your sleep. It helps you analyze your sleep patterns to improve your sleep schedule and environment.


The best sleep trackers will monitor how much deep sleep versus light sleep you’re getting, how long it takes you to fall asleep (“sleep latency”), and how often you wake up throughout the night.

You want a sleep tracker that will take into account your movements alongside the external environment of your bedroom to best optimize your nights.

 

 

 

Check out these tools that offer comprehensive sleep tracking:

Oura Ring

The Oura Ring is a small wearable ring looks sleek and unobtrusive on your finger but packs a punch with its wide range of technology. During the day it tracks your activity and calories. At night, it monitors temperature, movement, and heart rate so that you can understand the areas you need to focus on to improve sleep.

Every day you’ll have access to data on your sleep cycle types, the quality of your sleep and the quantity. This ring gives you access to wellbeing trends with daily, weekly, and monthly views of all contributing factors to your sleep, including stress and workout recovery!

Garmin Fenix Watch

The Garmin Fenix Watch is a rugged accessory made for outdoor adventures and also for your indoor rest time. It does a lot of what other smart watches does: tracking heart rate and movement. But it also has GPS, satellite reception and advanced biomechanical measuring for athletic performance.

When it is time to wind down, this watch also has the ability to the ability to track and provide data for light and deep sleep, REM (rapid eye movement), and awake time throughout your cycle. And, many stylish options!

Other Wearables


Of course other wearable watches such as Fitbit and Apple Watch have the capacity to track your sleep cycles as well, however you want to research whether or not it is meeting your needs as each wearable is different. If you have a health and fitness tracker, check to see if it will also track and analyze the quality of your sleep. The more your activity tracker can do, the better the picture of your overall health.

If you’re someone who is nervous about uploading your biometric data to an unknown server and don’t want to use a wearable sleep tracker, you can still benefit from tracking your sleep the old school way – with a journal. Keeping a physical sleep journal or log in a sleep tracker app on your phone can help you recognize you have a problem. Start by tracking when you go to bed, when you thought you fell asleep and any awakenings during the night.

What if your challenge isn’t staying asleep, but falling asleep in the first place? There are a number of factors that might make it challenging for you to fall asleep, from the external environment of your bedroom to your internal mental monologue. Tracking can help you determine where to focus. Let’s now discuss how to improve your bedroom environment to help you sleep better. (See the best wearable tech options here: How Wearable Tech Is Revolutionizing and Personalizing Healthcare)

Fall asleep faster

For a strong majority of us, the trouble with falling asleep comes from the incessant train of thoughts running through our heads. Whether you’re stressed about work, thinking about your to-do list, or wondering if there are aliens on other planets, we all fall into the endless loop of thoughts that make it hard to fall asleep.

So here are some sleep tech tools that can help soothe anxiety and quiet thoughts.

Headspace

A lot of people are finding success with the Headspace App to meditate and drift to sleep. You simply throw in your headphones, turn on the app, and listen to gentle sleep music and guided meditations to help you raise your mindfulness and drift into a calm, deep slumber. What distinguishes Headspace from other apps is the clinically-validated research that informs their product, so you know that they are always using the best health and meditation technology. This sleep app helps you create a customized plan and makes recommendations based on your personal settings. It’s free (or you can buy a premium subscription for expanded access) so why not try it out tonight?

For suggestions on other sleep gadgets that can help you fall asleep, read about Men’s Health Top 13 best gadgets. (https://www.menshealth.com/technology-gear/g23397130/best-sleep-tech/)

Get deeper, high-quality sleep

As I’ve mentioned, the quality of your sleep matters even more than the quantity. Too many of us may “sleep’ for 8 hours, but the majority of that is “light” sleep. If you’re not getting deep REM sleep, your body isn’t fully rejuvenating and resting. The main reasons you’re not getting deep sleep is because of your bedroom environment or not getting enough oxygen (which causes snoring).

Snoring

Are you a snorer? Snoring doesn’t just drive your partner crazy—it actually worsens your sleep quality as well! Snoring occurs when you’re not getting enough oxygen while sleeping, so your body overcompensates. Your body requires more oxygen during sleep to assist in the recovery and restoration process. Without good breathing, you aren’t inhaling the necessary oxygen, so you won’t get a good quality of sleep.

There are a lot of snoring devices out there that you can try. But most men don’t want to put a loud, cumbersome device on their faces to try and get rid of snoring.

SmartNora is a no-contact anti-snoring device that’s showing a lot of awesome results. You place an Expander device insert in your pillow and a Nora sensor on your nightstand. When the sensor hears you snoring, it activates the Expander. This gently moves your pillow to stimulate the throat muscles, which minimizes or stops snoring altogether.

Some men say the Nora is a little obtrusive the first few days when you feel the motion, but most men quickly get used to it. It’s a much better solution than nose strips, mouth guards, and muzzles.

Improve your bedroom environment

There are four key environmental factors that impact your sleep: light, noise, temperature, and air quality. What can you do about these?

Light

There are two aspects of light that impact your sleep: blue light and light pollution.

Blue Light vs. Red Light

Blue light is the light emitted from electronics, like phones, laptops, and even some light bulbs. Research has proven that blue light suppresses melatonin production and circadian rhythm about twice as long as other wavelengths, which can drastically impact both sleep quality and quantity. Those who have to spend lengthy periods of time in front of screens, perhaps for work, may wish to source prescription glasses which block blue light.

Red light on the other hand, is known to boost melatonin production and soothe you into sleep (amongst other benefits like activating the lymphatic system and reducing inflammation). But you don’t necessarily need your bedroom to have a Moulin Rouge glow. You can buy red spectrum bulbs, which minimize blue light wavelengths and maximize red ones without leaving your room rosy-colored. Try Lighting Science’s Good Night Biological LED Lamp (lsgc.com). Originally developed for NASA astronauts on the International Space Station, it looks like a regular white light but with all the sleep inducing benefits of red.

In addition, you’ll want to reduce and remove blue light in the evening. This can be done with just a few simple shifts:

  • Turn on “night shift” on your electronic devices. This reduces blue light by utilizing orange light instead.
  • Better yet, don’t use your electronics 2-3 hours before bed. This ensures you’re not subjecting your eyes and brain to any unnecessary light.
  • Invest in blue-light blocking glasses. You can choose yellow tinted ones like TrueDarks or newer generation “clear” lenses that reduce 90% of blue light.
  • Use Philips Hue ambiance color lights in your bedroom. If you find you respond best to color changes, you can use a setting that mimics a sunset. You can also program it to turn orange/red at night and blue in the morning to naturally promote your circadian rhythm.

Light pollution

Your brain is biologically programmed to be “on” when it sees light and “off” when the sun goes down. So even the smallest stream of light pouring into your bedroom could keep your brain in active mode, even while you’re sleeping. This can make it hard to fall asleep, or it might keep you in a lighter sleep cycle throughout the night.

The best way to do this is with blackout curtains, which block any and all light coming from your backyard or neighbors’ houses. You can also purchase blackout liners for your existing curtains.

Sleep masks are another option, if you don’t mind something on your face. These can make it challenging to wake up in the morning, though, since your brain isn’t exposed to light first thing.

Noise

Any background noise can be distracting and disturbing for your brain, even if you’re not conscious of it. A lot of people prefer to sleep with white noise makers or fans to drown out any external noise and drift into a deeper sleep.

There are a lot of different options to block or adjust the noise you hear at night, based on your preferences. Some popular choices include: CozyPhones, Nightingale Sleep System, and Dreampad.

CozyPhones

These sleep headphones are made for comfort. CozyPhones wear like a head band with breathable material so you can put on your music, books, or meditation without disturbing your partner. This works especially well if you don’t want to keep earplugs in all night.

You can also check out other headphones like Bose SleepBuds or QuietOn.

Nightingale Sleep System

The Nightgale sleep system works if you and your partner both want white noise. This system creates a blanket of sound throughout your room using a stereo effect, which masks environmental noises and lulls you into a gentle sleep. You can even connect it to a smart device to get weather, traffic, and other alerts built in to help wake you up in the morning.

Dreampad

The Dreampad relaxation pillow plays soothing music and sounds to help you sleep right through your pillow, traveling through your entire body. This helps you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. It uses gentle vibrations so it won’t wake up your partner, and it’s been backed by a number of studies as one of the best ways to minimize pre-sleep stress.

Note: If you want to listen to music but don’t want the music to stimulate your brain, consider listening to binaural beats. Theta waves initiate drowsy, light sleep while delta waves keep you in a deep sleep. You can find these sorts of binaural beats on meditation apps like Insight Timer or even on YouTube videos! (Check out this video of 8 hours of theta waves.)

sleep tracking Dr Tracy Gapin men's health optimization

Temperature

Studies show that sleeping in a cold room is actually better for your health than sleeping in a warm one. Our body temperature naturally drops while we sleep, so a cooler bedroom can reinforce the body’s instinct to sleep. Temperatures between 60 and 68 degrees have been shown to stimulate the production of melatonin, which is the “sleep hormone.”

You can sleep with a fan, like a Dyson cool air purifier, to cool down your room. However, moving air may actually make it harder to sleep for some people. If you’re not too fond of the idea of a fan it may be worth looking at an air filter from somewhere like air purifier first may be a better option, as there will be less of a direct flow of air compared to a dyson fan.

Instead, I recommend a Nest thermostat. You can program your smart thermostat to make your A.C. cooler at night to help you fall asleep, but then it can get warmer in the morning to help you wake up easier. (No one likes to leave their comfy bed if it’s too cold in the morning.) Plus, you can save money on your energy bill by programming your thermostat to cool and heat your house in accordance with your routines and lifestyle.

You can also try out cooling sheets. These promote air flow and minimize perspiration, so you can stay covered while staying cool. Sheex is a popular option thanks to their Sleep-Fit Technology with advanced thermoregulation. Plus, their sheets are super soft and quick drying.

Natural solution: sleep naked! Doesn’t hurt, right?

Air quality

Poor air quality in your bedroom may actually play the biggest role in your ability to sleep soundly through the night. Our bodies require high levels of oxygen at night. If your bedroom doesn’t have clean, pure oxygen available, your body can’t fall into that restful state it needs for restoring balance.

See what your air quality looks like with a monitor like Awair. This analyzes and tracks toxins, chemicals, dust, humidity, and carbon dioxide to determine what your bedroom environment is like. It will even learn your routines, habits, and lifestyle to determine how your living impacts your air quality. Awair even interacts with other smart home devices to offer personalized recommendations that can improve your air quality.

To purify your air, I recommend the Pure Cool Link Air Purifier by Dyson. This two-in-one fan purifies 99.97% of allergens and pollutants, even those as small as 0.3 microns. It also keeps you cool while purifying, so you can have a chillier bedroom at night as well (and save on you’re HVAC bill).

You also want to keep the air humid, which helps keep your sinuses lubricated and your skin soft. Plus, humidity helps you sleep better. You can purchase a humidifier, or you can even use an essential oil diffuser. This will add a bit of moisture to the air while also making your room smell incredible. Add lavender, bergamot, and eucalyptus essential oils to induce superior sleep.

Natural air quality solution: succulents! Succulents continue to intake carbon dioxide and release oxygen at night (other plants stop releasing oxygen at night). So putting a few succulent plants in your bedroom can purify the air and add in more oxygen.

Wake up energized

Waking up is part of the sleep process as well. If you wake up in the middle of a dream, you’re waking up from deep REM sleep—the sleep that is used to restore your body back to healthy homeostasis. Interrupting this pattern stops your body in the middle of its work, which will leave you feeling groggy, tired, and unrested the whole day.

You want to wake up naturally, so you feel energetic and vital to take on the day. That’s why I recommend using a sunrise alarm clock. These gadgets will wake you up gently in accordance with your tracked sleep rhythm, using light that mimics the rise of the sun. Your brain will slowly start to acknowledge the rising light, so it will wake up naturally without the shock of an alarm clock.

Popular sun alarm clocks are the Nox Sleep Light and Philips Wake-Up Light.

Nox Sleep Light

This Nox sleep light will monitor your sleep quality, help you fall asleep, and wake you up naturally. I love that it adjusts according to your personal body clock. So, it will send off a red wavelength when you’re falling asleep to raise your production of melatonin. Then, it will wake you up at the lightest part of your sleep so you’ll feel awake and energized. It can also track your bedroom environment like temperature, humidity, light, and noise to optimize your sleep moving forward.

Philips Wake-up Light

Philips lights offers several versions of their sunrise lamp. These offer natural wake up sounds and sunrise simulation, but they also include simulated sunsets and sleep music. This is a great starter option if you already have a sleep tracker.

Can sleep gadgets really help me sleep?

The good news is that in this age of technology, many sleep problems can be resolved through access to these cool gadgets. Instead of being prescribed a pharmaceutical medication, learning to reduce blue light and listening to a meditation at bedtime may be the alternative you need. You’ll have to experiment to find the best sleep aid for your personal challenges. However, these sleeping tips aren’t meant to replace professional sleep therapy.

If you’re having a hard time falling or staying asleep, just buying up all of these bedroom gadgets isn’t necessarily going to help (and if your problems are chronic, you should really seek assistance from a medical professional, not an app or tech product). If you’re doing everything you can for your sleep and still aren’t seeing results, it may be in your genes. Yup, our sleep schedule is actually part of our genetic expression!

But you can hack your genetic expression, so you can sleep better and healthier. It starts with a consultation to see where your health is now… and where it can be in just a few short months or weeks.

Let’s get you sleeping right, waking well, and living awesome.

It’s time for you to get in the driver’s seat of your health. With elite men’s optimization program, we’ll put you at the peak of your human potential.

Click here to learn more about the lifelong benefits of a personalized genetics consultation and epigenetic coaching program.

I look forward to hearing from you to revolutionize and revitalize your life and vitality. Let’s taking your health to the next level.

Are Endocrine Disruptors In Drinking Water Causing A Health Risk?

We all know that water is a basic necessity for living.  Although we can go without food for 3 weeks or more, we cannot survive longer than a week without water. 

Those of us living in modern countries have access to clean drinking water, but how clean is it really? 

If prime health is a concern for you, you will want to know the facts about the water you consume and some of the hidden dangers for men.   Let’s focus on one sneaky culprit: endocrine disruptors in drinking water.

What is an endocrine disruptor, what are the dangers, and more importantly, how can you protect yourself from its negative impacts?

What are Endocrine Disruptors?

The endocrine system maintains homeostasis of the bodily systems through a delicate balance of hormones.  Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are substances that change the course of endocrine systems in a way that adversely affects the body.  These chemicals can produce adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects in humans and animals. Both natural and man-made substances can cause endocrine disruption and can be found in many everyday products.  These everyday products include plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, flame retardants, food, toys, and cosmetics.  

Endocrine disruptors can mimic naturally occurring hormones in the body like estrogens (the female sex hormone), androgens (the male sex hormone), and even thyroid hormones, potentially producing overstimulation.  They can also bind to a receptor within a cell and block a hormone from binding which impacts the body’s ability to respond properly. Endocrine disruptors may interfere with the way the body makes or controls natural hormones or their receptors.  Thus it affects other organs like metabolism in the liver and kidneys.

What are examples of Endocrine Disruptors?

Some chemical endocrine disruptors which directly impact male health include BPA, Phthalates, Altazine, and Estradiol.  And the sad truth is that many of these endocrine disruptors are in drinking water. We can also find Endocrine Disruptors in our natural environment, phytoestrogens being the most common culprit. Let’s go into greater detail about these endocrine disruptor chemicals, and where you can find them.  Below is a common endocrine disruptor list:

Bisphenol A (BPA)

Bisphenol A (BPA) is the most commonly known endocrine disruptor that has recently gotten a lot of focus recently but is a problem far from resolved.  Manufacturers produce the chemical called BPA, primarily in the production of polycarbonate plastics, epoxy resins, and food can linings. Studies show that testosterone becomes reduced within just 3 days of BPA exposure and that those consuming BPA are 4 times more likely to develop sexual disorders such as low libido and ejaculatory disorders.  Furthermore, exposure during gestation puts a child at more risk for adult testosterone imbalances.

In their September 2008 BPA review, The National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) expressed “some concern for effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures to BPA.” Although adopting a BPA-free process, some companies are simply replacing BPA with another compound called BPS.  Studies have shown BPS to be just as dangerous as BPA.  For more information on the invasiveness of BPA see my article, “Does BPA Cause Sexual Problems?” 

Phthalates

Manufacturers use chemicals called Phthalates to manufacture a wide variety of consumer food packaging, some children’s products, pharmaceuticals, household items and body care products like shampoo. I consider phthalates the worse anti-androgen.  Studies show the presence of phthalates cause low testosterone and male infertility as well as male congenital defects such as testicular dysgenesis, cryptorchidism (undescended testicles), and hypospadias (abnormal urethra growth).   In 2006, NTP found that phthalates may pose a risk to human development, especially critically ill male infants which further indicates its correlation to male health.

Atrazine

In agriculture, farmers world-wide commonly use Atrazine, a toxic herbacide, especially for corn and grains.  Interestingly, Europe has banned its use, but companies in the U.S. still heavily use Atrazine.   A study done on frogs exposed to this herbicide showed that Atrazine inhibits testosterone synthesis so much that 10% off the frogs became feminized, meaning the males become females who reproduced and laid eggs after exposure.  Read that again, the males actually became females and laid eggs.

Phytoestrogens & Estradiol

Phytoestrogens & Estradiol are substances that have estrogen hormone-like activity that reduces androgen activity.  Contraception companies use Estradiol, a synthetic form of estrogen, as a key ingredient in birth control pills. You may not think that men are at risk because women are the ones who normally take birth control. But, contraceptives are just one of many pharmaceuticals that find their way into our water and food through off waste.  Eye opening, right?

One study showed a dramatic effect on fish whose testosterone levels fell due to estradiol exposure. Similarly, phytoestrogens are naturally occurring substances in plants that have hormone-like activity. Soy-derived products, hemp and flax seed are examples of phytoestrogens.  Soy, now 90% GMO, is the worst offender, decreasing testosterone and sperm production.  

The Concerns Around Endocrine Disruptors in Water and Other Products

Manufacturers use these endocrine disruptors in numerous consumer goods and personal care products. This exposes humans to the harmful effects of these substances in a variety of ways.  When our bodies absorb these toxic chemicals, transmitted through our food and our water without our knowledge, it can create deadly complications. Once exposed, many of these chemicals remain in the body for a long time, causing health challenges by cumulative effect. 

In a study of 20 biopsies, they found 19 different endocrine disruptors in all 20 bodies! Furthermore, pregnant women can pass these endocrine disruptors to their babies through the womb, having a transgenerational effect (Wang et al, 2015). This means that even if you have avoided exposure as much as possible, your health could be at risk due to any exposure from your parents.  Experts report that if tested, 90% of us will show detectable BPA in our urine and 98% of us will show phthalates in our system. This is scary!

As mentioned above, studies show these endocrine disruptors decrease testosterone leading to infertility, testicular and prostate cancers.  The rise of endocrine receptors in the environment as well as the simultaneous rise of male reproductive disorders calls attention to the idea that endocrine disruptors may be responsible for the decline in male reproductive health (more in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043754/).  Other negative impacts of endocrine disruptors include:

  • insulin resistance
  • obesity
  • ADD
  • depression
  • and immune dysfunction such as allergies and skin conditions.

Because manufacturers use them so predominantly, experts are finding these chemicals in our shampoos, clothes, toothpastes, soaps, utensils, and deodorant! Now, more than ever, we need to carefully choose the items we purchase and put into our body.

Regulations to Remove Endocrine Disruptors

In order to tackle this issue, some countries have already established regulations to remove endocrine disruptor chemicals from everyday products.  France has outlawed BPA in food containers and DEHP in child-related products. In the United States, legislation such as the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Food Quality Protection Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to control regulations upon chemicals that are endocrine disruptors.  The Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program introduced by the EPA in 1998 has allowed for the testing of over 85,000 chemicals but has yet to be implemented. Although we have seen some legal change, we still need more countries to adopt these regulations. And for the potential enactment of new legislation to happen, we need the proper agencies to screen a wider range of chemicals.

Furthermore, most of this change was the result of public outcry and pressure, not company integrity.  And in underdeveloped countries, the proper authorities have made limited efforts to warn people about these serious issues.  Companies that create these chemicals do not openly explain the methods of minimizing exposure.  Nor do they develop efficient mitigation strategies in the environment.  These same companies could use a wide diversity of estrogen-degrading microorganisms to develop biological filters in the post-treatment of wastewater.

Endocrine Disruptors in Drinking Water

In many highly populated countries, authorities source the country’s drinking water from the same rivers and lakes that contain sewage and industrial discharge.   For example, the River Thames which flows through London, has passed through drinking water and sewage discharge 5 times.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology

“Under these types of circumstances, any accumulation of endocrine disrupting compounds from sewage or industry potentially affects the quality of drinking water. Neither basic wastewater treatment nor basic drinking water treatment will eliminate the estrogens, androgens or detergent breakdown products from water, due to the chemical stability of the structures. Hence a potential risk to health exists.”  

As a result of this concern, authorities have turned their attention toward enhanced wastewater treatment and are implementing advanced techniques. This treatment employs particle removal, ozone oxidation and activated charcoal filters.  That being said, recent studies showed that 94% of lakes in the midwest, our biggest supplier of corn, were positive for Atrazine and 29% of drinking water samples across the U.S. contained phthalates.    

We can all agree that water is fundamental for human health and well-being.  Paradoxically, the loose regulations have contributed to the alteration and deterioration of water supply sources causing risks for the population in the past.  Since the end of the 19th century, the role of drinking water in exposing populations to pathogens, and improvements in its quality in order to prevent illness, has been widely documented and debated.   Furthermore, what is ‘healthy’ to be in your water, such as Fluoride and Chlorine, has recently become challenged.

  

How can I drink better water?

My intention is not to scare you out of drinking water, however I hope it will inspire better choices around the sources of your water.   Not all bottled water is in BPA-free bottles . Due to the lack of screening, you can’t be sure what other endocrine disruptors are leaking into your water through the plastic.  Bottled water is a much safer choice when you are in countries with poor water regulations. However, we have no proof that bottled water is healthier than tap water.  The FDA only regulates bottled water if  it crosses state lines. So authorities are not testing 70% of bottled water for contaminants!

Even distilled water does not remove endocrine disruptors.  On the other hand, the United States highly regulates its drinking water systems (tap).  The U.S. also frequently tests its water systems for harmful pollutants. Your most cost efficient and healthy option is to filter your own tap water beyond what your city is already doing.

What about water filters?

Of the vast array of water filter products you can choose from, pitcher/faucet filters such as the Brita filter are the most common.  Although this can reduce chlorine and improve taste, because the carbon in the filter is not solid, they are not effective in removing endocrine disruptors in water, fluoride, or heavy metals.  You can check your local water quality report (through your local water company’s website) to see what contaminants are in your water.  Then you can determine how much to invest in your filtration. 

No matter which you choose, if you want to remove endocrine disruptors in water, you want to ensure your filter is solid block carbon. These units may cost you more upfront. However, in the long run, they are your least expensive option because they require less filter replacements.  A solid filtration system can last you years before changing your filters!

The most common and highly rated of these filters is the Berkey brand.  Berkey filters come in many sizes for different uses.  You can even use them to filter river water for drinking! This can be bulky however, as it is a counter-top filter that can take up quite a lot of space. Sometimes it makes the most sense to invest in an under-counter multi-stage water filter system for your household.  Overall, the Berkey brand is a fabulous filter for removing endocrine disruptors in drinking water.

It’s not just about Endocrine Disruptors in Drinking Water

With a deeper understanding of endocrine disruptor compounds, you now have new knowledge to inform better choices for your health.  My recommendation is for a balance of mitigating exposure and detoxification.  

  1. Reduce Exposure To Plastics.  You want to avoid plastics used for storing and cooking.  Never use plastic to microwave or hold hot drinks or food.  Even your plastic coffee makers can leak endocrine disruptors into the water that becomes your morning cup of joe. Reading labels in addition to choosing natural body products and eliminate fragrances from personal care items, especially laundry can help.  One of my favorite apps is Healthy Living. Simply scan the product in the grocery store.  Then, this nifty software will tell you what endocrine disruptors are in those products!
  2. Build Your Immune System.  Eliminate highly processed foods avoiding those with ingredients that start with ‘benz’ or ‘phen’.  Limit grains (especially corn and wheat) as well as dairy. Eliminate soy products and check labels because food companies often use soy lecithin to bind products.   Eating wild caught fish and filling your plate organic produce will strengthen your immune system.  It will also prevent the dangerous build up of toxins in your system.
  3. Support Through Detox.   Given the cumulative effect of endocrine disruptors, I recommend using herbs to gently detox your body from these toxic chemicals.  Some herbs that are especially helpful for endocrine disruptors specifically are green tea, holy basil, pau darco, and curcumin (turmeric).  Research shows DIM and quercetin supplements also support in detox.

Conclusion

It is clear that endocrine disruptors in drinking water is a concern.  Not only does it effect male health but also human lifespan and longevity.  We can’t rely on the EPA and water companies to ensure that our drinking water is free of endocrine disruptors in drinking water.  So it is important to take your health into your own hands through the above recommendations.  You can reduce the negative impacts of BPA, endocrine disruptors in water and other toxins through conscious consumer choices and lifestyle changes.

As a powerful man looking to optimize your life, you should be on the path of lifestyle health program. With my suite, I test your DNA, interpret the results, and come up with a customized plan.  This customized plan is specific to YOUR individual genes and lifestyle. It will improve every area of your life from your health and energy to your professional productivity to your personal relationships.

It’s time for you to get in the driver’s seat of your health. With elite men’s optimization program, we’ll put you at the peak of your human potential.

Schedule a consultation to learn how to personalized health advice so you can live your life to the fullest.

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Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS  is a board-certified Urologist,  world renowned Men’s Health & Performance Expert, Author, and Professional Speaker. Using state-of-the-art biometric monitoring, nutrition and lifestyle intervention, Dr. Gapin coaches Fortune 500 executives and evolutionary leaders of business, sports medicine, and high performance. He specializes in cutting-edge precision medicine with an emphasis on epigenetics, providing men with a personalized path to optimizing health & performance. www.GapinInstitute.com

 

What is Heart Rate Variability and Why Does It Matter To You?

Fit man working out

Heart rate variability (HRV) has stormed into the mainstream health and fitness world as one of the best indicators of daily and overall well-being. It’s an effective marker for sleep, recovery, performance, and health of the heart and autonomic system. 

Studies also show that a higher HRV has been linked to a lower risk of mortality, especially for sudden cardiac death. 

HRV might be one of the best tools to tracking acute and chronic health concerns. So what is HRV and why does it matter to you? 

What is heart rate variability? 

Heart rate variability (HRV) is the variation that occurs in the intervals between consecutive heartbeats. 

Okay, but what does that actually mean? 

Let’s start with understanding your heart rate, which is not the same as heart rate variability. Your heart rate (HR) is the amount of times your heart beats in a minute. If you take your pulse on your wrist, your heart rate is the number of pulses you feel in a 60-second timeframe. 

Heart rate variability is actually referring to the silent period in between those beats or pulses. Your heart doesn’t actually beat at a steady rate. If you have a heart rate of 60 beats per minute, your heart isn’t actually beating every second consistently. There are slight millisecond variations between each heartbeat. 

We’re not like the Tin Man. Our hearts aren’t machines that beat at the same rate consistently. Our hearts are gentle, sensitive organs that have slight (but healthy) irregularities.

Although measured in milliseconds, you can actually feel the difference in the “silent” intervals between your heartbeats. Right now, put your fingers on your wrist and search for your pulse. Take a few deep breaths in and out. You’ll probably notice that the time between beats gets longer while you’re exhaling—that’s because your heart rate is slowing down. You’ll notice the interval gets shorter when you’re inhaling because of an increase in heart rate. Referred to as sinus arrhythmia, this is the most basic way that our heart rate varies. 

I’ll reiterate that you actually want variation in your heart rate intervals, because that shows that you’re healthy! 

How does heart rate variability change? 

Your heart rate variability isn’t a static number. It’s constantly changing based on different events and scenarios, both internally and externally. 

Keep in mind that heart rate variability refers to the variation of the intervals between heartbeats. It’s not a number or time period itself. 

So a “low” HRV means that the intervals between your heartbeats are more consistent and steady. There is low or less variability. For example, if your heart rate were 60 beats per minute, the majority of your intervals might be precisely 1 second. 

A “high” HRV means that there is a lot more variation in the intervals between your heartbeats. With a 60 beats/minute HR, you might have one beat after 1.03 seconds, another after 1.06 seconds, then 1.05 seconds, then 1.01 seconds. There is more variation in the time between the beats. 

How does heart rate variability work? 

Heart rate variability is directly linked to, and controlled by, the autonomic nervous system. HRV actually is an indicator of how well your nervous system is functioning. 

There are two sides to the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. 

The sympathetic system is what triggers the stress-induced fight or flight response. It raises your adrenaline and cortisol, and it prepares your body to take action against some stressor. The sympathetic system should be activated as a short-term response to certain stressful events, but it can be seriously unhealthy for your mental and physical state to live in a high sympathetic state. 

The parasympathetic system is what helps restore homeostasis (balance) in your body by pulling down the response of the sympathetic system. This controls the rest, recovery, and digestion processes. 

When your body is stressed, the sympathetic system kicks into gear. This releases stress hormones and increases your cardiac output. Basically, it tells your heart to pump out more blood, so the blood can transport oxygen to the muscles and tissues—which will help you in the fight or flight response. When the sympathetic system is engaged, your heart rate variability decreases. Your heart is generally beating faster and more consistently. 

After the stressful situation is gone, the parasympathetic system activates to slow your heart rate back down to resting. This increases your heart rate variability to restore homeostasis. 

In general, you want a higher HRV. This is because a higher HRV, or more variability between heartbeats, indicates that your body has a strong ability to tolerate stress.

A high HRV indicates that your parasympathetic system is working. A low HRV indicates that your sympathetic system is engaged, which means you’re body is being stressed out (mentally or physically). 

Why is this important? Your body needs to be able to respond to stressors, so you don’t get eaten by a bear (for example). But you can’t live in that stressed state or it would do damage to your heart. Essentially, the autonomic system and heart rate variability enable your heart to respond to different needs and situations. 

Key point: If you have a low variation in heart rate variability compared to your baseline, something is likely stressing out your body. 

Why do we need to track heart rate variability? 

Heart rate variability is the biggest marker we have to the health and wellness of our autonomic nervous system. And the nervous system is tied to every automatic process in the body like regulation of blood sugar, blood pressure, body temperature, sweat, digestion, and more.

When we understand how our autonomic nervous system is functioning, we can better understand how almost every process in our body is operating. 

HRV is especially used as an indicator of fitness, our body’s ability to handle and recover after stress, and our heart health. A high HRV is an indication of a healthy cardiovascular system. A lower heart rate with a high HRV means that your parasympathetic system and heart are working effectively to bring your body back to homeostasis after stress or exercise. 

HRV is one of the most sensitive changes in the body. The interval between your heartbeats is one of the first indicators that something is wrong. Watching for these fluctuations can alert you to changes in your health well before other symptoms show up. 

What are some examples of when HRV might change? 

  • Stress or lack of sleep: Your HRV will likely drop when you’re stressed or sleep deprived, and you’ll need more time for recovery. 
  • Intense endurance exercise: Working out acutely lowers your HRV because your body is stressed out. But during recovery, your HRV will jump back up. If it doesn’t increase, you may be training too hard or too often. This is important to track if you’re on a fitness or training plan. 
  • Substances: Drugs, alcohol, and smoking all lower your HRV. You may notice that you’ll have a lower HRV after a night out because your body is stressed while trying to detox. 
  • Dehydration: Your HRV will lower quickly when dehydrated, because it doesn’t have the water it needs to function properly. When you re-hydrate, it should increase again. 

One of my favorites uses of the HRV is that you can use it to tell if you’re about to get sick. If your HRV goes down but you’re not stressed out in any way (mental or physical), you might be on your way to getting sick. In fact, HRV usually lowers even before you develop symptoms of sickness. So if you notice your HRV is lowering, you may want to take some time to rest and recover to combat any illness about to set in. 


What affects heart rate variability? 

Our heart rate variability actually changes every day based on activity, stress, and health. It’s constantly changing in response to different situations—and that’s a good thing! Heart rate variability can be affected by age, hormones, body functions, lifestyle, external events, and more. 

About 30% of our heart rate variability boils down to genetics. But the other 70% is completely controllable. You can actually improve your HRV based on your health, fitness, recovery skills, and stress resilience. 

In the last section, I’ll talk more about how you can direct your HRV to improve your overall health and wellness. 

How do you measure HRV? 

There are a few different methods to measure heart rate variability. One of the most popular ways is the ECG-based (electrocardiogram) method, which calculates the time between R waves in the QRS complex. These are referred to as R-R intervals. Some trackers use PPG, which measures interbeat intervals (IBI). 

Different trackers use different measurement methods. There isn’t really one “right” way to do it. So you can choose a wearable that’s best for your lifestyle and look. 

Which wearable trackers are best? Get all the info you need here: How Wearable Tech Is Revolutionizing and Personalizing Healthcare.  

How can I get started tracking HRV? 

Everyone has a unique heart rate variability based on genetics and lifestyle. There are also a lot of different ways to measure and track HRV, so it’s hard to compare different variations. So you’ll have to track your own HRV to understand what your baseline looks like in order to utilize HRV as an indicator of your personal health. 

First, you’ll want to find your HRV baseline. Note when you’re feeling “average”—not great, not bad— because that’s usually your baseline. You’ll want to keep track of this for a week or two to get a good idea of what your HRV is. If you have a tracker, it will usually help analyze your baseline for you. 

Once you have your baseline, it’s easier to see how your body is reacting. If your HRV goes down and you have a low HRV, your body might be stressed, overworked, or overwhelmed for some reason. You could have mental stress, you could be getting sick, or you might not be recovering effectively. If your HRV goes up with a high HRV, then you might be doing something healthy for you—like meditating or being creative. 

I recommend keeping a log of your HRV, whether or not you have a wearable that tracks it for you. This helps you understand all of the different variables going on in your life that could be affecting your HRV. For example, your HRV might decrease when you’re driving. If you log this several days in a row, you might start to notice that your HRV only drops in traffic—because traffic stresses you out! 

There’s a lot that can go into HRV tracking, so keeping a log is the best way to manage and analyze all of the factors at once. Learn more about how to keep a biohacking log here.  

How can I improve my HRV? 

Here’s what will decrease your HRV in the short term: 

  • Stress
  • Poor quality and quantity of sleep
  • Food intolerances, especially lactose
  • Alcohol and/or drugs
  • Sickness
  • Medications (antihistamines, antidepressants
  • Hot therapy 

Even exercise will decrease your HRV because you’re stressing out your body. Then, your HRV will start to increase as your body starts to recover. 

Here’s what will decrease your HRV long-term, which is a major indicator of poor health: 

  • Age (your HRV will likely change as you age)
  • Chronic stress or burnout
  • Poor diet 
  • Chronic inflammation 
  • Lack of fitness
  • Chronic disease
  • Lack of sleep
  • Overtraining
  • Unhealthy environment 

If your body is stressed out in any way for an extended period of time, it will show up in a decreased HRV. This means you’ll start to notice a downward trend in your HRV over time, and your “baseline” actually starts to get lower and lower. 

A low HRV over an extended period of time isn’t a problem on its own… It’s just an indicator that there’s something wrong. So if you notice this downward trend, it’s time to chat with a medical professional! 

But there are actually lifestyle changes you can make that will increase your heart rate variability by improving your recovery and improving your health. 

So what can you do to increase your HRV, in the short and long term? 

The awesome news is that these lifestyle changes also impact your epigenetics. Learn more about epigenetics and the impact on health with the following resources:

HRV is a tracker of your health, but not a health condition on its own. If you want to improve your health, it starts with hacking your genes. 

Are you ready to get your health on track? Want to know exactly how your body and heart rate variability will respond to certain situations based on your genes and lifestyle? Want greater control over your health and wellness? 

Then you need to check out my performance coaching. We’ll work together to unlock your genetic code and come up with a specific plan for your lifestyle choices and environmental factors so you can be on the path towards energy, health, vitality, and life! 

Take your life to the next level here. 

Want more tips to optimize your health and testosterone?

Listen to the latest podcasts. Click HERE

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS  is a board-certified Urologist,  world renowned Men’s Health & Performance Expert, Author, and Professional Speaker. Using state-of-the-art biometric monitoring, nutrition and lifestyle intervention, Dr. Gapin coaches Fortune 500 executives and evolutionary leaders of business, sports medicine, and high performance. He specializes in cutting-edge precision medicine with an emphasis on epigenetics, providing men with a personalized path to optimizing health & performance. www.GapinInstitute.com  

Transform Your Health With Your DNA

Transform Your Health with Your DNA - Dr Tracy Gapin

Your DNA tells a story and can transform your health. We celebrate DNA Day on April 25 every year to commemorate the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 and the discovery of the double helix of DNA in 1953.

But DNA Day (and every subsequent day) is more than just a nod at the incredible scientists advancing research in health and medicine. It’s the perfect opportunity for YOU to take control of your own wellbeing by taking time to understand how your DNA impacts your life—and how you can hack your genes for improved health and vitality.

Let’s take a dive into how advancements in DNA research impact you, and what you can do to take your wellness to the next level.

What is the Human Genome Project?

DNA Day is the celebration of the completion of the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project was an international, collaborative research project that identified and mapped all of the known human genes. It specified where these genes are in the sequence and their purpose from a physical and functional standpoint. This project has completely revolutionized the way we understand genes, health, and medicine.

Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, stated: “The genome is a history book—a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It’s a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it’s a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent, and cure disease.”

The Human Genome Project set in motion a new wave of studies looking at how individual genes play a role in physical traits, behaviors, and risk of disease. More researchers began to realize the impact that genetics has on health, especially with regards to risk of chronic illness.

Without this project, I likely wouldn’t be able to help my clients in the profound way I am able to currently through my genetics coaching. Now that we have more information about genetics and epigenetics, and now that we have more researchers participating in genetic studies, advancements are ever deepening our understanding of hacking our genes to improve wellness, lengthen lifespans, and taking health to a new dimension. I owe my work and the success of my clients to the Human Genome Project!

What is DNA?

Most people have a basic understanding of DNA, but genetics is a complicated subject that necessitates a little extra explanation. So let’s get into it just a little.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is essentially your hereditary material. Almost every cell in your body has your unique DNA sequence tucked away in its cells. There are over 3 billion bases in human DNA, and 99% of those bases are the same for all humans. It’s the sequence of that last 1% that makes us all unique and inimitable!

Genes are made up of DNA. Each gene has its own function. For example, some genes code for proteins like muscles and tissues, while others determine physical or behavioral traits. The Human Genome Project estimates that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. You have two copies from each gene, one inherited from each parent.
Genes make up chromosomes. Most people have 23 chromosomes. The chromosome is basically the structure of DNA, which is tightly coiled around histone proteins.

You don’t really need to remember all of this. What you really need to take is this: your genes are complicated. Little DNA strands make up genes that coil together into a chromosome, which sits in every cell nucleus. Different cells activate different genes, which is how your cells can have different functions (like hair proteins versus blood cells) while keeping in alignment with your basic genetic structure.

And your DNA is just the start. Your genetic sequence is the blueprint for your body and health, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. That’s where your epigenetics comes in.

What is epigenetics?

Epigenetics is how your genes are expressed, controlled by the activation or deactivation by certain lifestyle factors.

For years, people thought that genetics were unchangeable or that it took multiple generations and random mutations to change your genes. More research on epigenetics tells us that’s not the case, though. The genetic blueprint is passed down, but the expression of those genes can change throughout the course of your life. You could actually have a different genetic expression at different points in your life!

Here’s how it works. Certain external factors can turn your genes “off” or “on,” usually through DNA methylation. Methylation refers to the addition of a methyl group to a DNA strand, basically flipping a switch that turns it into the “off” position (usually). Methylation can be positive on some genes, and it can have a negative effect on others. For example, you’ll want an increase in methylation (deactivation) on those genes that cause tumor growth. But you’d want a decrease in methylation (activation) on genes that suppress tumor growth. So a risk of cancer can be programmed into your DNA, but epigenetics tell your DNA whether to express that risk or not.

Where do methylation and other epigenetic changes come from? Diet, stress, sleep, exercise, thought patterns, behaviors, and other lifestyle factors can all impact the expression of your genes.

There is a lot that goes into epigenetics. It’s an entire field of research with a lot of moving parts. You can start delving in a little deeper to learn more here: What Is Epigenetics And Why Do You Care?

More epigenetics resources to check out:

What can I do about my genes?

The Human Genome Project gave us the foundation we need to understand how genes and sequences impact health. It told us which genes need to be activated in order to protect us from disease, and which need to be deactivated in order to ward off potential health complications.

Research on epigenetics has furthered this understanding to tell us that our genes are never static. We can actually control how we activate and deactivate these genes.

That means YOU are in control of your health.

Your genetic sequence tells you where you came from, and your epigenetics tells you where you’re going. So let’s use that to our advantage! What can you do about your genes to bring you the health and life you crave?

hormone hunger ghrelin men's health

1. Acknowledge any harmful habits.

We all have bad habits. Maybe you sit on the couch all day Saturday and do nothing. Maybe you smoke when you’re anxious. Maybe you stress about little things. Maybe you pull an all-nighter when you have a project at work.

These small habits can and do add up, and they can appear in the form of negative gene expression.

Before you start making any lifestyle changes to hack your DNA, I want you to take a look at how you’re living your life now. Don’t be hard on yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. The goal is simply to understand where your current level of health is coming from.

If you want to make a change, you have to be honest with yourself about your lifestyle. Only you can make the change.

2. Discover your genetic sequence.

Your genes are uniquely yours. That means no two health plans are going to be the same. When you go into a doctor’s office, they usually only have the ability to give you a cookie-cutter plan based on your general health as it stands. But you need more than that in order to be healthy. You need a deep understanding of your health on a genetic level to ensure you’re making the right lifestyle choices for your body.

I recommend getting a professional genetics test accompanied by a comprehensive consultation with a genetics coach. This gives you data of your test results, but it also takes it one step further to understand exactly what that data is trying to tell you about your health.

Understanding is the first step to resolution and growth!

The best part about professional genetics coaching is that your data is secure. No leaks or sold data, like some of these genetic tests! The other best part? You get a customized plan built just for you, and you can track and analyze results accordingly.

3. Start hacking.

Now that you know your genes and what that means for your health… you can take massive action to improve. It’s not actually that hard to hack your genetic expression once you know what it looks like. You might need to tweak your nutrition, adjust your workouts, and bump up your sleep—but it comes down to unassuming lifestyle changes that can make a huge difference in your short-term and long-term health.

Talk to a genetics coach about designing an effective plan to hack your genes and unlock your wellness.

There’s no better time to take your genes to the next level than DNA day!

Work With Me

Going deeper into DNA

DNA is cool. I think it’s awesome that you’ve read this article, and you’re eager to take control of your health. It’s the men that equip themselves with knowledge and then take action on that knowledge that live healthy, long, vital lives. I’m excited that you’re part of that determined group of men taking your life, energy, and vitality to the next level.

Want more participation? Of course you do. Because you’re always striving or more. You want to delve deeper and start hacking your genes, so you can prevent risk of disease, revitalize your energy, and renew your vitality.

If you’re one of those powerful men looking to renew and restore your life, you should be on the path of lifestyle health program. With my suite, I test your DNA, interpret the results, and come up with a customized plan that’s specific to YOUR individual genes and lifestyle. We’ll work together to come up with a health strategy that will improve every area of your life from your health and energy to your professional productivity to your personal relationships.

It’s time for you to get in the driver’s seat of your health. With my genetics coaching plan, we’ll gas up your car, rev the engine, and zoom off.

Click here to learn more about the lifelong benefits of a personalized genetics consultation and epigenetic coaching program.

I look forward to hearing from you to revolutionize and revitalize your life and vitality. Let’s celebrate DNA day the best way by hacking your DNA and taking your health to the next level.

Schedule a consultation to learn how  understanding your DNA can help you lose weight, gain energy and even have a better sex life.

Ready to take the next steps?

Download the Blueprint

Schedule a Call

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In Male 2.0™, Dr. Tracy Gapin has turned everything we once thought we knew about men’s health and performance upside down. The old model of how to be “a man” is broken. A man who works himself to death.  Unfortunately, a man who tries to NOT get sick but isn’t really healthy either.  And a man who takes a pill for every ill but is never really cured. That was Male 1.0. Now, imagine being THE MAN ─ owning your performance in the bedroom, the weight room, and the boardroom. Living a fully optimized life. Becoming limitless. This is Male 2.0!

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS  is a board-certified Urologist,  world renowned Men’s Health & Performance Expert, Author, and Professional Speaker. Using state-of-the-art biometric monitoring, nutrition and lifestyle intervention, Dr. Gapin coaches Fortune 500 executives and evolutionary leaders of business, sports medicine, and high performance. He specializes in cutting-edge precision medicine with an emphasis on epigenetics, providing men with a personalized path to optimizing health & performance. www.GapinInstitute.com

Want more tips to optimize your health?  Listen to the latest podcasts. Click HERE

How Wearable Tech is Revolutionizing and Personalizing Healthcare

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Wearable technology isn’t new to the medical field, but emerging advancements have revolutionized the way users can control and monitor their health. Daily heart monitors and pedometers have been helping users track their own health and fitness for almost a decade. Coming into 2019, though, we’ve seen an unprecedented influx of wearable medical devices and associated smartphone apps that are taking health to a new level. From sleep tracker apps to heart rate variability trackers to blood sugar monitors, tech companies are transforming annual physician visits into daily health habits.

Medicine is moving into the hands of the patient, ushering healthcare towards personalization and accessibility for all. Let’s take a look at the basics about what wearable health tech is and does, and then we’ll go through some of the popular and exciting technologies that are changing wellness, vitality, and longevity.

What is wearable health tech?

Wearable health technologies are, as the name suggests, tech advancements made to improve health—that you wear on your body. You put some sort of monitor around your wrist, finger, head, or chest. The monitor tracks your movement during the day or during your workout, and then it sends biofeedback (reports about your health) to a centralized system, like a phone app or cloud storage.

You have nearly instantaneous access to your health reports and biofeedback. You can refresh your phone app to see your heart rate up to a minute ago. And you can wake up in the morning and see exactly how you slept the night before, down to the minutes, movement, and quality.

Wearable health technology lets your body tell you what’s going on. As you grow accustomed to the equipment and feedback, you’ll be able to become more attuned to your health and wellness.

What are the benefits of wearable health tech?

  1. It makes you proactive about your health: Wearable tech allows users to keep up with their health before something goes wrong. You’re not thinking about your health once a year when it comes time for your annual physician visit (or less frequently, if you’re like some patients I know). You’re aware of and focused on your health every single day. This enhances understanding of health and makes people more proactive about their lifestyle decisions. Proactivity is the best way to keep disease away.
  2. It gives you control of your health: Wearable tech gives the user more control of their experience of health. These equipment increase understanding of different health measures, making users more mindful about their health every single day. For those individuals who want to live a healthy and vital life, this level of control over their own health can be relieving.
  3. It helps your doctor do their job. But you’re not alone in your health journey. Most technology will allow you to share health reports with family and doctors. This means your doctors can keep up with you and your health on a regular basis. More healthcare practitioners are moving to this one-on-one relationship-based approach to medicine, especially as healthcare gets more complex.
  4. It detects problems faster: You’re getting biofeedback down to the minute. This allows for earlier detection of concerns. Since the majority of diseases are progressive, swift detection can help minimize symptoms and treat the disease more fully and effectively. These techs can help kill the monster when it’s small.
  5. It provides more data for improved treatment: You’re tracking your health every single day. You’re creating a strong set of data about you and your body. If something does go wrong with your health, you already have weeks or months of data for your doctor to look at. This massive data set helps you and your doctor better understand your symptoms for more accurate and effective treatment—at a faster pace.
  6. It helps you live better, longer: You’re proactive about your health. You’re more aware of what’s going on with your body. You can catch things early, and you and your doctor have more data to better understand what’s going on. Altogether, you have a better hold on your health, so you can make better decisions for your life. This leads you to improved health, vitality, and longevity.
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What should my wearable technology track?

Different technologies offer different sorts of tracking and analysis options. Some of the monitoring capabilities of wearable tech includes:

  • Heart Rate Variability: the interval between heartbeats; a clue into health of autonomic nervous system (learn more about HRV here)
  • Heart rate: moving and resting rate determines overall health of body and heart
  • Blood oxygen saturation: amount of oxygen in blood, needed to keep organs and body healthy and energetic
  • Body temperature: tracks baseline versus temp due to disease, infection, or stress
  • Respiratory rate: how many breaths a person takes while at rest; abnormal can be clue into illness, infection, disease, or dehydration
  • Sleep stages: REM, light, deep to measure quality of sleep
  • Workout metrics: performance and endurance during activity
  • Step count: amount of steps taken during day, demonstrates basic level of activity
  • Calories burned: calories burned at rest and with activity

When selecting wearable tech, you also want to consider the usability of the software, the ease of wearing, and the different tracking and reporting features. Ideally, you want to be able to keep your doctor aligned with your health reports. Some tech equipment includes a community feature as well so you can include your friends and family to keep you accountable and healthy.

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What are some of the wearable tech options that are personalizing health?

1. Garmin Fenix Watch

The Fenix watch by Garmin was originally made for runners, athletes, and adventurers, but it’s become a staple for in the wearable tech world. It offers some of the clearest technology in an easy-to-use, unobtrusive way.

You just put your watch on (or keep it on all the time), and you have your health on you at all times. It has Elevate ™ wrist heart rate technology, so it can track your heart rate and heart rate variability down to the second. Your watch will count your steps, track your sleep, measure calories burned, and even quantify the intensity of your activities. The watch even shows biomechanical measurements like cadence, stride length, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, and vertical ratio while working out. It gives you insights into your anaerobic training metrics and tells you how to train productively based on your recent exercise history and performance.

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https://explore.garmin.com/en-US/fenix/

The watch also includes outdoor sensors with GPS and GLONASS satellite reception, so it can tell how far you’ve run/biked, your altitude changes, and even the barometric pressure you’re in. Wear it while swimming to track distance, pace, stroke, and count. Wear it skiing or snowboarding to track speed, distance, vertical drop, and run. Go into golf mode for yardage on your course, autoshot detection, and stat tracking.

Plus, it has a great design, especially for men. If you’re going to be wearing your health monitors all day, you want it to look cool. The Fenix has a rugged design with durable sport band and stainless steel fittings, so you’ll look as awesome as you feel. And you can even link your phone to your watch to get messages and calls, like you would with any other smart watch.

There’s also a community aspect. You can connect with friends and neighbors who also have the watch, so you can compare activity and goals. Push each other to live healthier. If you’re competitive, this feature is a must to take your life to the next level.

If you’re not a serious athlete, the Fenix might be an unnecessary cost. However, a lot of my patients love the daily performance metrics, smart notifications, and advanced tracking features. It really is the most comprehensive, adaptable, and usable watch on the market currently. As a doctor, I love the readability and breadth of reports to get an idea of how your workouts and daily movement is impacting your lifestyle.

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2. Biostrap

https://shop.biostrap.com/products/biostrap-set

Biostrap is similar to the Garmin watch, but it’s more for the every-man who doesn’t necessarily need GPS tracking for runs or cycling.

The Biostrap also helps you track your workouts by capturing your full body movement. The wristband and shoe-pod work together to understand how your body is moving, especially during workouts. It tracks blood oxygen saturation, heart rate variability, heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep analytics (sleep stages)—all day and night. During exercise, it tracks cadence, velocity, reps, and more. Not only does it track the data, but it also gives personalized insights to understand how you’re performing and how you can improve your health.

A unique aspect of the Biostrap is how it follows your heart. It doesn’t just check your pulse, but it captures specific waveforms that doctors use to monitor patients in-house. This gives more precise heartbeat data and analysis to ensure your heart is always beating strong.

The app is minimalistic and easy to use. You can set daily and long-term goals, look at your exercise library, and monitor your health with just a few taps. Biostrap is a great option to look into if you want in-depth tracking but you’re new to wearable tech or looking for a more approachable platform.

3. Oura Ring

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https://ouraring.com/

I can’t stress it enough: sleep is critical. A poor quality and quantity of sleep is directly linked to low testosterone, low energy, obesity, and increased risk of disease like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Poor sleep may even be linked to an increased rate of mortality (aka death)!

That’s where Oura Ring steps in. This is one of the best sleep trackers on the market (although there are a few). This ring is packed with sensors to help you understand different areas of your health, from sleep to workouts and beyond. It uses a body temperature sensor to get your temperature baselines and variations, infrared LEDs to measure blood volume pulse, and 3D accelerometers and gyroscopes to detect the amplitude and intensity of your body movement. It tracks you 24/7 so you can understand your movement and energy from wakefulness through sleep.

Some of its features include:

  • Bedtime guidance
  • Sleep quality measurements
  • Sleep stage tracking (REM, deep, light)
  • Quality and quantity sleep trends
  • Daily recovery optimization
  • Resting heart rate
  • Heart rate variability (HRV)
  • Body temperature trends
  • Respiratory rate
  • Steps and calories
  • Activity tracking and inactive alerts

Users also love the minimalistic design and integration with Apple Health app. You can import your workouts automatically to track your activity, calories, and fitness in your Health app.

So Oura isn’t just about sleep. It’s about understanding the basics of your health, so you can see just how your body is working to stay strong and vital. It also helps you set goals for your health and wellness, so you always feel incredible.

4. Heartmath Inner Balance

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https://store.heartmath.com/innerbalance

Training your emotional wellbeing is one of the best ways to handle your hormones, be more productive, and get the most out of life. Reducing stress is one of the best things you can do for your health to reduce your risk of diseases like cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and others. Stress is America’s silent epidemic, but HeartMath helps you take control of what you’re feeling.

The Heartmath Inner balance app and sensor actually focus on your mental wellbeing along with your physical. Its goal is to help you find balance, release stress, and reduce anxiety. Research shows that our heart rhythm actually reflects our inner state. Your heartbeat is erratic when you’re stressed or frustrated, but it’s consistent and even when you’re in a calm, collected state. So this tech actually helps you connect your emotions with your heart on a physiological level.

Research has shown that stress resiliency is a strong predictor of health. Being able to stay calm in periods of stress can help minimize the strain on your heart and head, while on the other hand getting anxious or stress drastically increases your risk of health complications. There’s a reason it’s called disease– because there is dis-ease in your body and brain.

It will observe your heart rhythm variability, which gives insights into your emotional state. It then offers HeartMath techniques to guide you to a more stress-free state. Coherence feedback can tell when you’ve made an emotional shift and then trains you to sustain that consistent heart-rate and mental state.

5. Halo headset

wearable-technology-6

https://www.haloneuro.com

The Halo Sport headsetstimulates your brain and increases neuroplasticity, which basically puts you into a state of hyper-learning. It uses small electrical currents to make the brain “pliable”, so it’s ready to learn and work harder. This can make you more productive, accelerate your recovery time, enhance your workouts, and improve your learning.

Throw on the headset for 20 minutes before working out or taking a piano lesson, and you’ll see marked improvements in how productive you are during the next hour. There are a number of studies proving that neuroplasticity works to put your brain into optimal over-drive. In fact, Olympians saw 45% faster results in training with Halo Sport than without!

The purpose of the Halo headset is to take your brain up a notch to make time-usage more efficient, whether working out, working at your desk, or learning something new. The headset connects to an app that tracks brain data, sends notification reminders, and provides tips to hack your brain and productivity.

Imagine what you could do if every hour was spent at peak capacity.

6. Apple Watch

Of course, we can’t forget the popular smart watch by Apple. Some of the newer watches are comparable to other tech wearables, offering a number of health and wellness components. Below are some of the uses of the Apple Watch:

  • It will constantly monitor your heart rate with the ECG app using just a fingerprint, giving a physician-worthy ECG waveform in 30 seconds.
  • The Breathe app keeps you calm and reminds you to relax throughout the day, putting your heart and mind back in alignment.
  • It can sense if you’ve fallen down, and the instant SOS alert sends help immediately.
  • It tracks your workouts and daily activity, and it will alert you when you need to get up and move.
  • You can pair your watch with compatible gym equipment to stay in sync with metrics like heart rate, speed, and calories burned. It can also automatically detect your workout, and you can input workouts based on type of activity.
  • It’s waterproof up to 50m, so you can take it in the water and work up a serious sweat.

People like using the Apple Watch because all of the information is centralized in your Health app, where it’s easy to find reports and share them with your doctor. Additionally, you can customize your watch completely to your needs. You can download different health apps for tracking and data input, like Dexcom G6 for diabetes glucose alerts or Lifesum to keep you moving with your food and workout goals. You can even see weather conditions, play your music, get messages, and other Apple app uses. Plus, there’s a strong community (and competition) aspect, so you can connect and share health data with friends.

The Apple Watch also offers many choices for customization, with https://mobilemob.com.au/ selling a variation of bands to accessorize your watch. It may not be as accurate as the other choices, but the customization that Mobile Mob makes up for it!

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Other interesting wearables

AlivCor KardiaMobile: This helps track heart health, especially irregular heartbeats. It links to the Apple’s heart rate sensor for continuous monitoring, and it has a small ECG pad on the watchband to determine irregularities.

Motiv: A smart ring that tracks sleep, activity, and heart rate. It’s one of the more simple designs and usage for the beginner tracker.

SleepScore Labs: SleepScore offers a non-contact sleep tracker using artificial intelligence. This sits on your bedside table to detect sleep movements as well as snoring, teeth grinding, and sleep apnea patterns.

L’Oreal UV sense: This battery-free sensor is so small it fits on the thumbnail for two weeks. It measures UV exposures to determine how to best protect your skin. After two weeks, you download the info into your smartphone and the sensor can be reused for ongoing data collection. This is usually used more for data collection purposes.

Air Louisville: Tracks the environment around you including the air quality and pollution of your city. It was made especially for patients who suffer from asthma. This collects data from individuals to assess long-term health risks for the overall public.

There are hundreds of health tech equipment on the market. Do your research to see which will best suit your health and lifestyle needs.

Conclusion

Technology is constantly changing, which in turn ushers in unprecedented advancements in the healthcare and medical world. Wearable tech is putting control in the hands of the individual to maintain their own health, wellness, and longevity.

It’s never been easier to stay healthy.

Wearable tech helps you understand the ins and outs of your own unique health. Each person has a unique blueprint and lifestyle that determines your wellness. That’s what The Edge Blueprint ebook dives into. You learn how to leverage your unique genetic blueprint to maximize your testosterone, boost energy, and climb to the next level of health– in a way that works best for you. Download The Edge Blueprint For Men

Are YOU ready to transform your health?

With my genetics coaching, I use testing and analysis to look at your genetic makeup and epigenetic expression to understand exactly how your body is working today. Together, we then create a personalized lifestyle plan, one variable at a time, to bring your body into its peak state.

Want to learn more? Download my FREE Edge Blueprint for Men eBook. You’ll learn how to leverage your genetics to maximize testosterone, optimize performance, and take your life to the next level!

Want more tips to optimize your health and testosterone?

Listen to the latest podcasts. Click HERE

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS – Board Certified Urologist in Sarasota, Men’s Health Optimization Expert and Medical Director of Sarasota Apeiron Center for Human Potential. Founder of www.SmartMensHealth.com

Your Stress Resiliency and Management May Predict How Long You Live

Everyone deals with stress. But the way you respond to that stress can either grow you or kill you. That’s not an exaggeration. Your “stress resiliency”—how well you cope with short- and long-term stress—is actually a consistent predictor for health, wellness, and mortality.

Research has shown that the response to stress has a greater impact on health and longevity than the stressor itself.

Let’s take a look at why stress is unhealthy, what stress resiliency is, and how you can enhance your stress resiliency to effectively handle stressors to maintain your health now and for many, many vital years to come.

Health problems of stress

Stress takes a toll on your health. There’s no question about it. You’ve likely felt the physical effects of stress before.

You’re dealing with a stressful project at work, but that stress doesn’t stay at work. You start to get anxious, and your mind is racing a million miles a minute. Your heartbeat is faster and your blood pressure is higher. You wake up in the morning exhausted and you’re tired all day, but you still have trouble sleeping at night. Your stomach hurts, your muscles are weak, and your brain is foggy. And that motivation to finish that project has flown out the window.

We often think of stress as a mental thing associated with anxiety and depression. It is, in part, mental. But it’s also entirely physical as well. Stress shows up in your body in a lot of serious physical manifestations. Trying different treatment plans could be the way forward to help you get this stress under control. 

When faced with a stressor, your sympathetic nervous system activates and releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This sets off the “fight or flight” response, used as a survival technique against the stressor. Physical signs of this response include:

  • Rapid heart beat and breathing
  • Increased blood pressure
  • Pale or flushed skin
  • Dilated pupils
  • Enlarged blood vessels
  • Digestion stops (blood rushes to muscles, away from stomach)

The fight or flight response can be incredibly useful when the stressor is an immediate threat to life, like if you run into a bear in the woods or your child is choking. Your body senses the stress and physically prepares to run or act. Your body actually has this response to help you react; for example, your pupils dilate so you can see more of the environment to respond to any incoming bear attacks.

But the fight or flight response was meant to be acute (short-term). It’s not supposed to last for more than 60 minutes. These hormones put your body into overdrive, literally changing how your breathing, blood, and organs function. After the stressor is gone, the parasympathetic system takes over to pull down the response and bring your body back to homeostasis.

The modern-day man is facing a unique biological challenge, though. Most of our stressors aren’t acute or life threatening. Oftentimes, in fact, our greatest stressors are fabricated in our heads. We’re stressed about being embarrassed or rejected. We’re stressed about things that are over and done with or things that haven’t happened (and may not happen).

We stress in a long-term, less tangible way. Stress is no longer: see bear, run or fight bear. Now, stress is: I have to do a presentation, but I don’t have all the information I need because Joe didn’t get it to me, and what if I pick the wrong slides, or what if I sweat through my shirt, and what if they don’t like me or I fail, and what if we lose the entire account because my ideas are no good, oh and by the way, I’ll have to run to my son’s soccer game but I forgot to pack his team snack, and my wife and I aren’t on the same page about saving our finances, and dang, I really want to go on vacation.

Did that inner monologue sound familiar? Maybe you even got stressed out reading it.

We all have stressful thoughts. But spiraling into a “stress monologue” can actually alert your sympathetic nervous system and put you into a perpetual fight or flight response. So, you put your mind and body into overdrive long-term, which is can cause serious health concerns.

Short-term impacts of stress include:

  • Headache
  • Fatigue
  • Anxiety
  • Sadness or depression
  • Restlessness
  • Lack of motivation or focus
  • Muscle tension
  • Irritability or anger
  • Appetite changes (overeating or under-eating)

Long-term health impacts of stress are linked to:

There’s no doubt that stress is a serious health problem. Stress can even alter the expression of your genes, putting you at risk for disease and illness.

But it’s not actually the stressor that’s causing your health problems. Stress is completely internal. We can either let stress seep in and impact our health… or we can choose not to. If we don’t spiral into that stress monologue, our bodies won’t have that physical response.

Introducing “stress resiliency.”

What is stress resiliency?

Stress resiliency refers to how well you can respond to and cope with stress. It says whether you freak out or laugh it off. It determines how long you feel stressed, what you think about the stress, and how you handle people and situations around you.

Stress resiliency is the top predictor for mortality. Basically, if you stress more, your risk of dying early increases drastically. If you acknowledge stress and let it go, you’re more likely to live a healthier, longer life.

“Stress resiliency” has four main factors:

  1. The stressful event
  2. The external coping resources available to us
  3. The inner coping resources we’ve learned
  4. How we mentally mold the stress

(Psst… The final two factors are the greatest predictors for mortality and longevity. You’ll see why.)

  1. Stress event: Some stressors are more “stressful” than others. For example, the loss of a spouse is probably more stressful than running late for a work meeting. In general, long-term, “heavier” stress generally puts the individual at a higher risk for health complications.

Regardless, no matter the type of stress, the impact on health comes down to your personal coping mechanisms to respond to that stressor. If you easily get stressed every day, you’ll have worse health than someone who can grieve or stress in an effective way.

  1. External coping resources: Research shows that having strong social support can enhance stress resiliency. In opposition, poor social support can actually worsen your response to stress. In fact, a lack of social support may even modify the epigenetic expression of your genes! The feeling of loneliness can actually enhance stress and worsen the ability to respond to everyday stressors, often leading to psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, sleep problems, and Alzheimer’s disease.
  2. Internal coping resources: However, stress resiliency is not really about what others can do for you. Studies show that how you internally manage your stress is more important. Typically, these internal resources are learned mechanisms that you’ve gathered throughout your life.

For example, Joe sees his parents handle financial stress by fighting about it. Alex sees his parents handle stress by going on vacation for the weekend (leaving Alex with the grandparents). Joe is taught that arguing is the only way to cope with stress, but Alex sees a weekend away as the solution. They’ll likely take these coping mechanisms into their adult years as well.

But it’s not all about your childhood and parents, either. Throughout your life, you’ve handled stress in different ways. Some ways have worked for you. Others haven’t. The coping mechanisms you’ve been “rewarded for” start to get engrained in your brain.

A lot of us don’t have strong internal coping resources. That’s where a major part of the problem comes in. We’ve been (accidentally) taught that we should respond to stress with anger, frustration, sadness, or other negative emotions. We’re taught that stress is evil, so we have to respond by curling into a ball to protect ourselves from it.

That’s where the fourth factor comes in. Changing the way we view stress can improve and enhance our internal coping mechanisms.

  1. Mental molding: This is my favorite part about stress resiliency. The way you view stress is actually the most important factor in how you’ll respond.

Everyone experiences stress. But the people who embrace it, rather than ignore it or let it overcome them, actually see the greatest response. Individuals who see stress as a challenge, not a threat, are actually more productive and motivated.

Here’s the proof that this matters:

  • A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that people who believed stress had a negative impact on their health had a 43% increased risk of death. Those who experienced stress but didn’t see the effects as negative were least likely to die compared to others in the study.
  • A study published in the European Heart Journal found an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in participants who perceived stress as negative. Repeated results in another study.
  • A two-part study looked at adults’ “affect reactivity” to stress (how they respond to stress). The results showed that negative affective reactivity—an inability to respond positively to stress—had a significant association with mortality risk, more so than even experiencing the stress itself.

Where does this link come from?

Researchers aren’t exactly sure yet why a negative response to stress increases mortality risk while a positive response to stress may actually decrease it.

The two theories to answer this question involve sleep and energy movement.

First, people who don’t know how to handle their stress generally have a worsened quality and quantity of sleep. The brain is consciously and subconsciously worrying and stressing, which interrupts the calmness that’s required for sleep. When sleep goes awry, so does everything else. Your body uses sleep to reset everything including the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems.

But people who know how to handle stress are more likely to have effective coping mechanisms. They might meditate or workout or indulge in fun hobbies to release some of the stress. These healthy stress relievers can improve calmness, regulate hormones, and encourage quality sleep—all of which contribute to improved health and wellbeing. Certain coping mechanisms, like working out, actually make you healthier too!

The second theory is the way energy is translated. Stress creates a buildup of energy in your body. That agitated, restless feeling you get when stressed because your hormones are surging and your blood is racing. This physical response of energy can actually be productive if channeled effectively.

If you think this energy is negative, it will have nowhere to go—so it’ll start to eat away at your health. But if you see this energy is positive, you can actually use it to be more productive, creative, and action-oriented. You can utilize that energy for work or exercise, for example, to actually enhance your results.

Basically, stress can be incredibly useful and can even improve your health—when you think it’s useful.

How to enhance stress resiliency

Let’s go backwards through the four factors of stress resiliency to deepen and develop your response to stress from the inside out.

1. Train your brain.

Stress resiliency is about embracing and managing stress, not about avoiding or reducing it. So step one is training your brain to view stress as healthy.

Every time you have a stress response, it leaves an imprint on your brain so you can handle that stress in the future. This is called “stress inoculation,” where you get a mental vaccine to that stressor. Your brain actually grows and changes from the experience.

That’s why astronauts, athletes, emergency responders, and Navy SEALs all have to go through rigorous stress training. They’re put through physical and mental stress, because it hardens them to other stressors they might see in the field.

It’s time to recognize that stress isn’t against you. It’s there to help you grow. So when you start to feel that anxious, stressed out feeling, take control of your thinking. Follow this mindset process:

  • Where is the stress coming from? What is the stressor?
  • Why are you feeling so stressed out? Are you anxious about the past or future?
  • Where is the stress in your body? Do you feel it in your head, your heart, your stomach? (This brings you into the physical sensation of the stress.)
  • What can you do right now to calm those nerves? Think about your coping mechanisms.
  • Consider what you could learn from this stressor. Why is this challenge put in front of you, and how can you grow from it?

Remember- the only people without stress are under ground!

2. Develop healthy stress management habits.

Now that you’re training your brain to see stress as positive, it’s time to update your internal coping mechanisms. It’s important to develop healthy reactions to stress, so you can have easy go-to methods to calm your brain and body when amidst the chaos.

For example, you may have built up resiliency to the daily stress of your job, but you don’t know how to mentally handle the death of your beloved pet. You want to stress management tools in your belt that you can utilize when new, unexpected stressors arise.

Remember that stress is still physical. So even if you’ve got the mental side down to a science by embracing stress, you’ll still want an arsenal of healthy internal coping mechanisms that can help regulate your stress hormones.

The best internal coping resource is actually laughter. Social studies show that people who can “laugh off” tension generally have a higher resiliency to stress. This isn’t always easy to do, and it often requires a major mindset shift. When you run into a traffic jam, look for the silver lining (like you’ll miss the first five minutes of that super boring meeting). When you and your partner are in a fight, drop the anger and get a little playful. Focusing on fun can help you redirect how your brain naturally responds to stress.

By the way, throwing a smile on your face actually makes you happier. Even if you’re not feeling amazing, smiling signals your brain to release “feel good” chemicals, so you’ll actually start to feel better!

Other ways to manage stress include:

If you are struggling to figure out your internal coping mechanisms, consider talking to a professional. Therapists are trained to figure out what makes you tick, so you can find stress management tools that will work for you.

3. Get social support.

You want to surround yourself with people who care about you, support you, and love you. Interestingly, though, “social support” isn’t actually what it might sound like. You shouldn’t surround yourself with people who are just there to make you feel better or let you wallow in your stress. You want “support” in that they push you and challenge you. Your social support should give you tough love and encourage you to channel your stress into something positive.

There’s another type of social support that works well: giving social support. One study looked at the link between stressful events and assisting others. They found that going through a major stress event increased a participant’s risk of death by 30%. But there was no increase risk of death in participants who frequently helped others or gave to their community—even if they dealt with high levels of stress. The researchers concluded that helping others could actually reduce stress and mortality rates.

The goal here is to get out of your own mind and into the beauty of relationships. You want to surround yourself with people who will comfort and challenge you, while being grateful for the people you have in your life. You also want to channel your stress to become a beacon of light for others. Giving is the best way to receive.

4. Know your stressors.

The first factor of stress resiliency is just the stressor itself. Different people have different stressors that elicit different reactions. For example, you might get really stressed by traffic but not by being late. Or you might be constantly stressed about your kid or your boss or your weight, but your wife is always stressed about money.

It’s important to acknowledge what makes you stressed, so you can learn to embrace these moments. It’s not about avoiding traffic or quitting your job. You just want to understand where your stress comes from, so you can start to focus your energy on how to better embrace those areas of your life. You can then direct your internal coping mechanisms effectively.

5. Focus on your health.

There’s a fifth method to consider… your health! Stress can worsen your health—but poor health can also stress out your body. If your hormones are out of whack, it’s easier to let stress seep in.

For example, low testosterone can actually worsen stress. The symptoms of low testosterone include fatigue, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, depression, weight gain, and a loss of muscle mass. These symptoms can all make your mind and body more stressed, which can send you into a “stress spiral.”

For example, if you’re not sleeping, your body doesn’t have time to produce testosterone and clear our cortisol—so you end up with an even worse imbalance of low T and high cortisol. The higher your cortisol, the more you’ll feel those physical effects of stress. Check out these 5 easy ways to balance your hormones.

Pregnenolone is the “building block” hormone. It’s the hormone used to create all other hormones—including both testosterone and cortisol. When the pregnenolone isn’t being used to create testosterone, there’s more available to create cortisol. So keeping your testosterone high is also a great way to keep your cortisol to a minimum. Oh, and by the way, some research shows that strong testosterone levels are linked to longer lifespans. Get more info about testosterone here.

You are resilient

Stress resilience is a direct predictor of mortality. How you respond to stressful situations has a greater impact on your health and mortality than even exposure to stress on its own. A negative view of stress can lead to a number of health problems in both the short- and long-term, eventually leading to early death. But seeing stress as an exciting challenge to overcome may actually improve your mental and physical health.

So how do YOU see stress?

Is your stress going to make you or break you? Are you going to grow or perish?

Are YOU ready to transform your health?

With our high performance health program, I use testing and analysis to look at your genetic makeup and epigenetic expression to understand exactly how your body is working today. Together, we then create a personalized lifestyle plan, one variable at a time, to bring your body into its peak state.

Want more tips to optimize your health and testosterone?

Listen to the latest podcasts. Click HERE

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS – Board Certified Urologist in Sarasota, High Performance Health Expert and Founder of www.GapinInstitute.com

How You Can Become A Biohacking Expert

Biohacking to optimize men's health

Biohacking is an incredible way for intelligent men to take their health and lives to the next level. You can essentially learn and “hack” your own body to be more productive, energetic, and vital.

But there’s a lot of material about biohacking out there… and not a lot of clarity.

So how do you know which hacks will and won’t work for your body? Which biohacks are actually going to affect your biology?

In this article, I’m going to give you some pointers to start navigating the vast and overwhelming world of biohacking, so you can become an expert safely, swiftly, and successfully.

So let’s start hacking!

What is biohacking?

Biohacking is, in essence, hacking your biology. It’s a form of self-improvement outside the conventional box of medicine.

Our bodies are affected by everything around us: food, environment, genetics, movement, and even our belief systems. You’ll even have a different biological response based on smells, sounds, and feelings around you. Your brain responds differently to jazz than to techno than to oldies rock. Your body is more energetic in certain lights than in others.

But not everyone is affected the same way by the same factors. Our bodies are complicated and unique.

Optimize your Health with Dr Tracy Gapin. The body is a complex system.

Biohacking has shown the medical world something invaluable. Humans are more than their genetic blueprint. We’re even more than our food. We are the sum of the entire world around us.

Even more importantly, biohacking tells us that we have control over our health, wellbeing, and life. You can change the variables to impact how your body reacts in certain situations.

So how can you get started with biohacking?

Biohacking isn’t consistent

This is where we lose a lot of men who aren’t committed enough to keep going. Because there aren’t any right or wrong answers when it comes to biohacking. It’s not black and white. It’s a lot of trial and error, which can feel exhausting at first.

Everyone has a different body composition, which means everyone will have different biohacking needs and reactions. As a basic example, you might need 1,800 calories in a day to maintain your weight, but your buddy might need 2,400 calories to maintain the same weight. Or you have a deficiency in vitamin D, while your buddy gets a lot of sun but is deficient in vitamin B12.

Everyone’s needs are uniquely theirs, which means their biohacking plan has to be personalized as well.

Get your edge back. A men's health and precision performance program.

Moreover, everything we do works together—or works against each other. The food you eat impacts your supplements and medications, which affects your fasting days, which impacts your workouts. There are endless variables, which can make it even harder to keep track of it all.

That’s why you have to keep track of it all. You want to do your research to see which biohacks might work for you, and then you want to keep a record to see if they actually are or aren’t working effectively for you.

In the rest of this article, I’ll teach you how to research and discover biohacks and then how to maintain records to determine their efficacy for you.

(I’ve repeated the phrase “for you” a lot because I want to emphasize that biohacking is an entirely personal process, designed and crafted FOR YOU.)

Researching biohacks

Determine what you want to improve.

You don’t want to just start throwing around biohacks and hoping one sticks. Think about which area(s) of your health you want to change. Create a list, and pick the one or two that are most important to you for the time being. For example, you might want to boost your productivity. When you boil “productivity” down, you really want more focus and attention so you can be more productive during the day. Now you have your starting point for your research!

Read studies.

Real research is the best research. You want to pull the majority of your info from legitimate studies and experts, like PubMed or ScienceDirect.

Still, keep in mind that experts aren’t perfect and no study is fool proof. Everyone’s biology is different, which means your reaction could be completely different than those in the study.

Research is constantly changing as well. Different methods and processes can come out with different results that may or may not have an impact on you specifically.

Plus, studies are made to isolate variables. So if they’re looking at the effects of vitamin C, they’ll remove all other supplements and variables so they can see just what the impacts of vitamin C are alone. That means if you take vitamin C and vitamins D and B12, you might see a different effect than isolated vitamin C.

Studies are a great way to determine the safety of a biohack and how it might impact your body, but even the strongest research won’t give you the full story. Your body is a system of interdependent networks, and nothing works in isolation—so studies in isolation also aren’t the end-all-be-all. You’ll need to try it for yourself and keep a log of your results to truly understand the impact (which I’ll dive into more below).

No amount of research will give you complete certainty.  


Look at online communities.

There are thousands of online health forums—some better than others. Forums, communities, and Facebook groups like Smart Men’s Health, are a great place to get ideas and see how people like you are implementing biohacks in their daily lives. This is a cool way to learn more about your interests and get an “inside scoop” in the biohacking world.  

As always, though, use your judgment. Everyone has the right to their opinion—but you don’t need to listen to all of them. Take in opinions and ideas, and then formulate your own.

Take notes.

The more notes you have, the better. As you’re researching, it can and will get overwhelming at times. There are going to be hundreds of experts contradicting one another. Everyone has an opinion, and those opinions may or may not be legitimate.

You could spend hours getting lost in the research. But note taking can help narrow your search and focus on those areas that matter most to you. Plus, you’ll have notes you can draw on moving forward if you choose to try out the biohack. This can be really useful when you’re looking at the effects of the biohack.

Most importantly: take note of safety. Don’t try a biohack if there are any cautions or dangers that are known and present.

What do you care about?

When doing your research, you especially want to take note of the following information, especially with regards to supplements.

Method: What are the best ways to utilize this supplement or hack? For example, supplementing with folate is healthy. But most formulas use folic acid, which doesn’t replace bioavailable folate. In fact, folic acid may cause methylation, which can impact your epigenetic expression. Another example might be B12 vitamins versus B12 shots, which can have completely different reactions based on the rest of your regimen. While researching, you want to research how different forms of utilization impact safety and efficacy.

Ingredients: Every single ingredient on the label matters. No supplement is completely isolated without inactive ingredients. So you want to take different ingredients and variables into account, especially with regards to your supplements. Keep in mind that there are no standards for supplements, so manufacturers may not even list all of the ingredients (especially if they’re toxic or unhealthy). I recommend looking up the labels online to get a fuller depiction of what’s actually inside the bottle.

Brand: I’ll repeat- there are no federal controls on supplements like there are with prescription drugs. All quality assurance and testing is performed by the company or a third party hired by the company. That means brand reputation is one of the most important aspects to determining the efficacy of the bottle. Look at reviews and discussions about the brand to ensure it’s legitimate and safe.

By the way, expensive doesn’t always mean better. A higher cost should be associated with higher quality ingredients—but make sure the reputation and reviews reflect that!  

Dose: How much you’re actually getting has a huge impact. Sometimes, one dosing of a product can offer healing benefits, but just a few more milligrams and it can be lethal. For example, aspirin is a great way to manage pain, but you can do serious (if not deadly) damage if you take too much. Supplementing with 5mg of zinc may be healthy, but 50mg can actually be dangerous. It’s not even that dosing is always fatal, either, but it may have more side effects. Red light therapy on a weekly basis may have positive anti-aging impacts, but multiple times per week can lead to dryness and dehydration.

Still, some doses can actually be lethal. Be aware of the LD50, which is the Lethal Dose 50%. This refers to the dose that would kill half of the test subjects. You want to make sure you’re aware of maximum dosage levels and lethal levels.

Don’t get scared off here. Even water can kill you in large quantities. The goal is to be aware of effective dosing and reduce your risk of taking too much. When in doubt, start with the lowest possible dose and work your way up.

Use it as a trial.

You’re never going to be completely confident with a biohack, no matter how much you research it. You simply need to use your common sense and try it out!

Remember that nothing is set in stone. The whole purpose of biohacking is trial and error to find what will best work for you.

I’ll repeat: don’t get risky here. Don’t try out dangerous or potentially lethal biohacks. That’s not worth the potential “error.” You’ve got one body. Keep it simple.

Start with low-risk hacks.

Get into the swing of things with low-risk hacks that are well researched and easy to implement. Some common places to start with biohacking:

  • Watch the labels on your food, especially your produce. Switch to organic fruits and veggies. Go for grass-fed beef and pastured eggs.
  • Incorporate more grass-fed butter, like Kerrygold, in your diet. Ghee butter is another great alternative.
  • Reduce your sugar intake. (You’ll actually have more energy when you have less sugar.)
  • Use a foam roller to ease aching and sore muscles.
  • Drink structured, alkaline water.
  • Go outside more to breathe fresh air and get sunlight.
  • Take a cold shower.
  • Meditate and be grateful. It actually changes your brain chemistry!
  • Listen to brainwave frequencies. Beta frequencies make you more awake and alert; alpha puts you into a meditative state; theta accesses your subconscious mind; and delta puts you into a deep sleep.  

Wait, those are biohacks? Eating butter is a biohack? Yup! It doesn’t have to be scary or hard. It’s about understanding how to fuel your body in a way that works for you.

But, putting butter in coffee might work for you, but it doesn’t work for your lactose intolerant friend. That’s where understanding your body and keeping a record comes in.

Biohack recordkeeping

So you’ve done all the research. You may be feeling a little bogged down, and you’re not really sure which way is up.

How do you know what actually works?

Unfortunately, you don’t know if it’s going to work… until you try it.

And even after you try it, you won’t know for sure unless you do some serious analysis with how your body reacts to it, especially in relation to all of the other variables going on in your life.

It’s time to make yourself a science experiment—and have fun doing it! You’re about to embark on a journey that can completely hack your mind, body, and wellness to take your life to the next level. Every “experiment” or trial you run is ushering you to the next step… so take notes, be thorough, and stay pumped!

It’s time for you to keep a daily log of everything going into your body and going on around you. You want to understand exactly how your body is responding to the smallest moments and changes, so you can amplify ones that work and negate those that don’t.

But how do you keep a biohacking log?

Choose your variables.

What are you actually going to try out? You want to list all of your variables, including constants and ones you change, so you can understand how the different factors are interacting.

Some common variables you’ll want to track:

  • Food/nutrition (especially macros and micros ratio)
  • Sleep quality and quantity
  • Intermittent fasting
  • Movement (exercise, daily activity)  
  • Supplements (brand, dosing, etc.)
  • Light exposure and spectrum (quality)
  • Air quality
  • Stressors
  • Water intake and quality
  • Organic vs non-organic
  • Mold and chemical exposure
  • Toxin intake
  • Illness
  • External events (happy, sad, or other)

The time you do everything is also important. For example, when are you eating? Eating carbs first thing in the morning might leave you tired, but a carb mid-day snack might be helpful for you to finish off the workday. Or, when are you going to sleep? This could impact your circadian rhythm and sleep quality.

The more variables you log—no matter how small—the easier it will be to track the outcomes.

Create your results.

What happens when you change certain variables? How do you feel?

I recommend that you come up with a list of decently quantifiable results, so you can easily measure and analyze your progress. Some results could include:

  • Energy
  • Focus
  • Awareness
  • Mood
  • Productivity
  • “Flow” or creativity
  • Clear headedness
  • Bloated (physical heaviness)
  • Muscle stiffness and soreness (inflammation)
  • Stress resiliency
  • Emotional acuity
  • Endurance
  • Performance
  • Recovery time
  • State of mind
  • Body temperature

Then, you might rate each of these on a 1 to 5 scale. This can help you compare results on a daily and long-term basis.

Ask reflective questions.

Your log doesn’t have to just be about data. Make it a living document. Include speculations, uncertainties, thoughts, and ideas. These might come in handy in the future.

For example, you could add a note: “Took my vitamin C at 9am instead of 8am and felt stronger. Maybe I need to take it with breakfast?” This essentially creates a theory for yourself that you can test at a later date.

The more you include your thoughts and feelings, the easier it will be to evaluate results.

Keep it simple—or complex.

Make your log as simple as you want… or as complex as you want. The goal is simply to make the log easy enough for you to use that you will actually utilize it on a regular basis.  

I recommend using Evernote. You can sync the mobile app with your desktop, so you can take notes anywhere and everywhere. It’s free and easy to use, so you’ll be eager to keep up with it.

Make sure you use a secure tracking application. You’re essentially logging your own health, so you don’t want any information getting leaked. Be careful and aware of what you’re putting out there.

Tip: If you use Evernote or another centralized tracking app, create your own hashtags so the documents are easily searchable. For example, #dropped could signify that you stopped using a certain supplement. If you want to find the day you stopped taking zinc, you search #dropped and #zinc to find it!

Tip 2: Save every document. The goal is to track your changes, so you don’t want to delete old information that could be important in your scientific quest.  

Make changes one at a time.

Don’t throw yourself into a bunch of biohacks at once and hope they all stick. Like any good science experiment (which you’ve now become), you want to test one variable at a time.

Everything—and I mean everything—interacts with one another. Your supplements could interfere with other supplements and medications. Or you go to an infrared sauna to detox but you take a supplement that is preventing your detox. Or you listen to music that stresses you out more and doesn’t let your body relax in the sauna. Too many variables can make understanding your biohacks a challenge.

Be sure to look at patterns and correlations. When you change a variable, there might be an unexpected reaction. That doesn’t necessarily mean that specific variable or supplement is bad—it just might be reacting with something else you’re taking. So it’s important to test out different thoughts and theories before casting off a biohack altogether.

Why use a log?

For some guys, a log seems like overkill. “I can think about stuff and know how I’m feeling, so why does it matter?” But it does matter. The little nuances of your health can make a big difference. And if you’re entering the biohacking world, you’ll quickly start to realize that a thousand different variables can impact your wellbeing. Keeping track of them will help you understand what works, what hurts, and where different interactions are coming into play.

It also helps train your brain to notice different aspects of your health. You learn how to assess yourself on a deeper level to see how the world and your lifestyle impact you. This can show massive results in the long run by putting you into a health-first mindset. The more attuned you are to your body, the easier it will be to improve your health and implement healthy biohacks.

All the research in the world can’t compare to your own feelings and intuition. If you listen to what your body is telling you, you’ll be able to understand how to hack your own bio in the most effective way.

Your framework

You’re doing the research and you’re keeping a log. In the meantime, you also want a separate log specifically for everything you’re currently using to biohack, especially medications and supplements. We refer to this as your “framework.” It’s essentially a list of all of the biohacks that are supporting your body—aka the structure or framework of your “building”. (Your body is a temple.)

Your framework sheet is basically just a reference so you can see exactly what you’re taking at any time. This can help you make effective comparisons and change variables, but it’s also useful when you’re talking to a medical expert or genetics coach. You hand them your framework sheet and it’s essentially a master list of everything you’re taking. This allows the medical professional to ensure safety and optimal health.

What should you include on your framework?

  • Supplements, prescriptions, drugs, vitamins, herbs
  • Dose (how much of each; make sure to confirm units)
  • Form (how are you taking each, like a pill or an injection)
  • Frequency (how often do you take it)
  • Brand
  • Exercise and nutrition routines

Essentially, you can include any variables (even light therapy, saunas, or air quality) on your framework to give your doc the full picture.

Note: If you take a formula supplement or multivitamin, make sure you itemize everything within it on your master sheet as well.

Whenever you add or remove something, save your framework sheet as a separate version. This will give you a history of frameworks, so you can compare how you were feeling with each set of variables.

Conclusion

P.S. Remember that some substances are actually dangerous. If there’s a biohack you’re not sure about, talk to a professional before trying it out.

Biohacking requires a lot of research, critical thinking, and testing. But it’s worth it. When you find a hack that works for you—whether it makes you more focused or energized or happier—then you’ll see what this biohacking craze is all about.  

Your body is constantly changing, so biohacking never stops. If you get into a groove of research and log keeping, though, you’ll quickly start to learn more about your body and how it handles the world around it.

This self-awareness can (and will) ultimately lead you to a significantly enhanced life, health, and wellness.  

Are YOU ready to start biohacking?

The best way to hack your body is to make changes at its very core and foundation… with your genes!

With my genetics coaching, I use testing and analysis to look at your genetic makeup and epigenetic expression to understand exactly how and why your body is working today. Together, we then create a personalized lifestyle plan, one variable at a time, to bring your body into its peak state.

Want to learn more? Download my FREE Edge Blueprint for Men eBook. You’ll learn how to hack your biology to maximize testosterone, optimize performance, and take your life to the next level!

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Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS – Board Certified Urologist in Sarasota, Men’s Health Optimization Expert and Medical Director of Sarasota Apeiron Center for Human Potential. Founder of www.SmartMensHealth.com    

Stress Less, Live More: The Neuroscience Behind Meditation

Your stress is literally killing you.

Stress has a serious impact on mental health. Stress can quickly deteriorate into anxiety and depression, which drastically worsens your quality of life. In some cases, it can even lead to suicide. Suicide is currently the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. In 2017, white males in middle age accounted for 77.97% of suicide deaths.

But it’s important to recognize that the impact of stress is not just mental. Stress impacts you physically as well.

When you’re stressed, your body releases cortisol and adrenaline. These are the hormones that control your fight or flight response. Stressing literally puts your body into a constant state of unrest, thinking it needs to fight something or run away as fast as possible. This gets pretty exhausting. So you use up energy on “fighting” nothing but your own brain. 

Elevated cortisol levels have been associated with low testosterone. And low testosterone is linked to a lot of health concerns, including anxiety, poor sleep quality, lowered sex drive, weight gain, reduced muscle mass, infertility, and more. Learn more about testosterone here.

Stress has been linked to:

  • Heart and blood vessel damage
  • Lowered immune response
  • Impaired memory and cognitive abilities
  • Infertility
  • Premature aging
  • Worsened quality of sleep (which has its own slew of health problems, even down to the genetic level)

When you feel stressed, you just don’t perform to your full potential. Life seems a little duller and foggier, and you can’t seem to get your legs beneath you. Every area of your life seems to start to unravel, even if it’s not related to your primary stressor.

Stress has even been proven to cause early mortality (aka you’ll die sooner)!

Read: Epigenetics- Does Stress Affect Your Genes?

Enter meditation.

Meditation has become the hottest trend in healthcare right now—and for a good reason. It’s proving to be one of the best ways to take control of your physical, mental, and emotional health

Meditation isn’t new. Meditation practices go back to the 5th century BCE (and likely even earlier). But the practice has become more popular recently as more and more research is proving that meditation has seriously positive impacts on mental and physical health, from reducing stress to improving productivity—to even extending your lifespan!

meditation
I know what you’re thinking. “I barely have time to drink water, let alone time for meditation.” Or, “I’m not into all that spiritual stuff.”

First, meditation takes no more than five minutes a day. And I’ll give you tips to do it when and where it’s most beneficial for you.

Second, Meditation isn’t only for the spiritual (although it can definitely help you connect more with your spiritual side, if that’s a goal of yours). Meditation is proven to literally mold your brain to think more critically and creatively while reducing stress, anxiety, depression, pain response, and negative emotions.

Let’s take a look the benefits of meditation and how meditation scientifically impacts the brain. Then, I’ll give you some simple tips to get you started with mindful meditation today. (It really is that simple!)

 

Benefits of meditation

Meditation promotes:

  • Relaxation
  • Reduced mental chatter
  • Quality of sleep
  • Focus and attention
  • Positive shifts in mood, including more compassion and less aggression
  • Health and wellness
  • Less stress, depression, and anxiety

Meditation has one huge benefit: it helps you stress less. It helps you better manage long-term stress and respond to short-term stressors. The practice literally trains your mind and nervous system to see stress as positive and manageable, which can completely transform the way you handle life.

Meditation is the most effective way to ease your stress. Studies prove that mindfulness practices literally rewire your brain to feel less stress and more positivity. And when you feel better, it’ll radiate to other parts of your life like your physical health, work, productivity, relationships, hobbies, and more.

We’ll delve even deeper into these benefits when we talk about how meditation scientifically impacts your brain below.

Neuroscience of meditation

All of those benefits are proven. It’s not just that meditation makes you feel better—which it does. But it actually changes the structure of your brain. Researchers have been surprised at the results they’re seeing when they take a look at MRIs of brains experiencing meditation practices.

Neuroplasticity is a complex topic, but here are the basics for our purposes in this guide. Neuroplasticity refers to how the brain can actually reorganize by forming new neural connections. This process can happen throughout life. New neurons appear in response to injury and disease, but they also show up in response to new situations or changes in environment. This means the brain is malleable, so your mind can actually physically change and improve based on external stimuli.

Meditation is a strong stimulus that can change the brain’s structure and actions.

Meditation impacts an entire network of brain regions.

In a review of 21 neuroimaging studies, researchers found that there were eight brain regions that were permanently altered in 300 expert meditators (who’d been practicing for awhile). It’s interesting to notice which areas of the brain are impacted long-term by meditation, because it says something about how meditation influences our thoughts processes:

  • Hippocampus: involved in memory formation and emotional responses
  • Rostrolateral pre-fontal cortex: associated with meta-awareness (awareness of entire world), introspection, and processing of complex information
  • Sensory cortices and insular cortex: processes tactile information like touch, pain, and body awareness
  • Anterior cingulate cortex and mid-cingulate cortex: involved in self-regulation, self-control, emotional regulation, and attention
  • Superior longitudinal fasciculus and corpus callosum: helps communicate within and between brain hemispheres

What can we glean from these altered brain regions? Meditation helps you think more critically, more clearly, and more positively. It may even improve response to physical and emotional pain.

How did meditation actually “impact” these areas? For the most part, there were physical changes in density and thickness of brain tissue as well as white matter fibre density. (White matter plays a role in learning and communication between brain tissues.) So meditation essentially makes your brain bigger and more communicative.

But what I think is most important about this study is that it proves meditation impacts several areas of the brain. It’s likely that meditation requires large-scale brain networks and functions. When you’re turning your brain “off” to meditate, you’re actually activating parts of the brain that impact your everyday thoughts and behaviors!

Here’s how we break it down. The brain is like a muscle. The more you work it, the more it grows. But the brain is very malleable, so working it the wrong way can also have a negative impact. It’s like if you lifted weights incorrectly and you strain or tear the muscle.

But meditation activates different areas of the brain in a healthy way, which molds the brain positively and effectively.

Meditation brings you into the present.

Everyone experiences stress. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, there are only three things that cause stress:

  • Thinking too much about yourself.
  • Ruminating about the past.
  • Worrying about the future.

Don’t believe me? Try it with whatever you’re stressed about. Pull the stressor down to its roots.

Worried about your kids? You’re actually worried about yourself. You’re worried your kids won’t end up the way you want them to. Or, you’re worried about the future—which you can’t control (especially when it comes to your kids).

Scared about a presentation you have to give? Your anxiety of the future can actually ruin your chances of doing well. If you focus on the present, you can instead focus on preparing for your speech.

The problem with the self

neuroscience of meditation
“All suffering is an obsession with self.” – Tony Robbins.

We’re never stressed when we’re giving. We only feel anxiety when we get into our own heads about personal survival. It’s important to address our own needs, but it’s also the fastest route to stress. In fact, studies show that the “ego” and self-absorbed thoughts are directly linked to anxiety and depression.

Meditation pulls you out of your head and into the world around you.

The problem with the past

The past isn’t changing. You can take actions now to rectify certain situations, like forgiving or asking for forgiveness. But what’s done is done, and you can’t control it. It’s like watching a TV show of your own life. You can’t reach through the glass to change what’s already been filmed.

There’s some beauty in the past. It’s okay to think back to positive memories. In fact, meditation will sometimes encourage you to bring up a beautiful memory to instill certain emotions in you. But even the positive memories can make you live in the past and nostalgic for “a better time,” which can take away from the beauty of the present.

The problem with the future

Mark Twain once declared, “I’ve suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of which never happened.”
We kill ourselves worrying about the future—whether or not the situation comes true. And even if it does happen, your worry didn’t do anything to help it. In fact, that anxiety you felt probably prevented you from taking effective action.

Here’s where a lot of men push back, because men are natural go-getters. “Thinking about the future is the only way I’ll get to my goals.” That’s true! But you want to think about the excitement of the future and what you can do in the present to get there. Worrying or speculating about the future will quickly lead you into a spiral of anxiety.

Meditation helps you break those mental patterns.

meditation

There are studies to prove that meditation helps you focus on the present, as opposed to the past or future.

When you’re daydreaming or simply going about your day, your brain is in default mode network (DMN). This is when you’re not really thinking about anything, but you’re also not mindful of anything. When looking at the MRI, the parts of the brain that light up in the DMN are those related to rumination and self-reflection.

During the DMN, the amygdala especially lights up. The amygdala is the part of the brain that controls the fight or flight response, decision-making, and emotional responses like fear and anxiety. Other studies have shown that the amygdala is more active when people are stressed. This, in turn, can actually worsen the decision making process. (That’s why you might make worse decisions when you’re stressed than if you had a “clear mind.”)

So just going through the motions of life may actually activate your stress!

But there’s an opposing network called the task positive network (TPN). This is the network that’s active when you’re focusing your attention on something. It’s responsible for present moment awareness. It’s when you direct your thoughts on one specific idea or task. It could be a work project or a task on your to-do list, but it could also be as simple as taking a moment to think about how delicious your cup of coffee is or enjoying the way your partner laughs at a bad joke.

It probably seems a little backwards. The DMN is when you’re not thinking, but you’re more stressed. But when you direct your thinking with the TPN, you don’t stress.

That’s because our brains want to be working so they don’t get lazy, but you have to direct the brain to work for you.

The DMN activates the rumination part of the brain. Rumination is linked to anxiety related to the past and future. But the task positive network is responsible for whatever task you’re currently doing. It brings you into the present.

Only one network can be active at a time. So, if you want to get out of stress and anxiety, you have to move into the TPN.

Meditation activates the task positive network. When you bring your attention to something—even if it’s a sound, smell, sensation, or breath—you come into the present moment.

Imagine it this way. You have a light bulb. Put that light bulb in a large room and it will add some light, but it won’t brighten the entire room. Now direct that light to a single point on the wall and it will be bright and clear.

The more focused the light, the brighter it will be. The same is true of your brain. The more focused your thoughts, the clearer and more positive they’ll be!

How to meditate

The goal of meditation isn’t to make your mind blank. It’s to bring attention to the present moment.

I’ll be honest… meditation isn’t easy! The first few times I did it, I actually felt more stressed. I would count my breathing and start thinking about how to breathe faster or why I wasn’t breathing this way all the time or why you count sheep while you sleep or why I wasn’t sleeping now… The train of thought can quickly spiral, as you likely well know.

So the goal is to try to break that and simply focus on the now. If a thought comes, acknowledge it, say hi, and then let it go and bring your mind back.

Here’s how to get started:

Get comfortable. You can lie down or sit up, but make sure you feel physically relaxed. Keep your back straight and release all tension in your body.

  1. Focus on your breath. Fill up your belly as far as you can as you inhale. And then exhale slowly. Do this for two minutes.
  2. If you find your mind wandering, come back to the breath. Stay with the feeling of the breath.
  3. If something is going on in the world around you, take notice of it before coming back. Acknowledge the chirping birds. Smell the bacon cooking downstairs? Wait, bacon?! No, no. Come back to the breath. The bacon will be there in two minutes. Focus on the breath.

If you’re a beginner, I recommend trying the “counting breath” meditation. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for eight seconds, and exhale through your mouth (using your teeth as a blocker) for sixteen seconds. When you become a pro at this pattern, times those numbers by two for an even deeper breath. If you have a more goal-oriented mind, counting gives your mind something to focus on and it elongates the breath.

If you’re looking for a deeper mental challenge, meditate in the “space” between each breath. You’ll notice that there’s a brief pause between the inhale and the exhale. As you breathe, think about the emptiness of this gap. Learn more about the pause breath method here.

How to meditate at work

meditation

Most stress originates at work. So you want to have some meditative practices in your back pocket you can pull out when you’re feeling pressure at your job.

When you’re feeling stressed, stop everything. Turn off your monitor and put the phone aside. Sit up in your chair. Take 10 deep breaths, focusing only on the inhale and the exhale. It only takes a minute or two and you’ll instantly feel calmer. (Or throw in your headphones and listen to a short guided meditation on an app, which I list below.

You’ll also want to focus on keeping your desk clean. If you’re feeling stressed but can’t pinpoint why, it’s likely because your physical space isn’t clean and clear. Take a few minutes to organize and your brain will start to relax again.

Need a little more privacy for your meditation? Go in the bathroom. Do what you need to do to get your head right.

How to meditate at home

Get away from all the noise. Find a quiet space away from the kids and pets. Keep your phone and electronics in another room. I typically recommend using your bedroom and/or bed as your meditative space, because then you start to create a Pavlovian response to your bed that it’s a place to relax and unwind. (Never do work in bed, because it will have the opposite effect.)

When you’re at home, it can feel like there’s chaos around you. So just breathe. You only need two to five minutes. That’s a lot less time than you’re likely spending on social media or browsing the web, so consider shifting your time into something more productive.

Try: Meditation with your partner. Some studies suggest that daily meditation with your partner can actually increase your emotional connection.

You can also meditate while doing household chores. Listen to the tinks in the washing machine while you’re folding clothes. Admire the soap bubbles while washing the dishes. This is a great time just to be present while reducing physical and mental clutter.

How to meditate working out

Working out is one of the best times to clear your mind and come back into the present. Exercise is meditative in it of itself. You’re pushing your body, so you have to focus on your breath more. This is the whole purpose of meditation: to focus on one task, aka your breath. When you’re lifting weights or running, you’re putting your body into a repetitive motion that gives you the time to focus solely on that task and your associated breath.

If you like to listen to music when you workout, use the music as meditation. Focus on the voice, the different instruments, and the beats. Breathe in tune with the music for even more alignment.

When you enter the gym (or any other spot you’re working out), leave your stress at the door and focus on having the best workout of your life.

Pro-tip: Push yourself past your limits. Do two more reps than you think you can. This is where your muscles—and mind—see the greatest growth. When you push past your limits, your mind actually re-wires. It starts to realize that the limitations you place on yourself don’t exist. As David Goggins says, callus your mind: “You have to suffer. You have to make a tattoo on your brain, so that when hard times come again, you don’t forget it.”

Meditation and pushing yourself to the next level work together to completely transform the structure of your mind.

Read: Can High Intensity Interval Training Make You Manlier?

How to meditate in the car

I’d like to preface this by saying your first and foremost focus should be on the road. But driving meditation can actually work really well, especially if you tend towards road rage.

Don’t close your eyes and do the typical meditation stuff. Instead, focus on simply being in the present. Notice how the yellow lines are painted on the road or how the sun glistens on the pavement. Simply acknowledge all the things around you and take this time to focus on the beauty of the drive. I especially like to turn off the radio and listen to the little sounds my car makes as it’s working hard to get me to my destination. Think about how fortunate you are to have a car so you can travel to places and people easily.

This will make you more present, so you’ll actually feel more relaxed and fulfilled by the time you get to your destination. It may also make you a better driver because you’re noticing more on the road!

(Please always drive responsibly.)

Mindfulness apps

If you struggle to meditate on your own, it’s completely fine (actually, it’s recommended) to get some guidance.

There are over 2,000 meditation apps available on Apple and iOS. Don’t start stressing—I’ve narrowed it down for you to give you the ones that are most highly rated and backed by scientific studies.

Insight Timer: This app has one of the largest databases with over 13,000 guided meditations on topics like stress, relationships, creativity, productivity, and more. It also includes podcasts for inspiration and music tracks to soothe your mind. It’s great for short bursts of blasting stress or long meditative sessions.

Headspace: They’re promoting all over social media, and they’re changing a lot of people’s lives. They use science-based meditations, animations, articles, and videos to help you train your mind. This one’s definitely worth looking into.

Calm: Tranquil sounds and music instantly relax you when you open the app. It offers shorter meditation practices, great for beginners and busy meditators. We also love the sleep stories that are made to help you fall asleep (great for the anxious nighttime owl).

Stop, Breathe, and Think: When you sign in, you’re asked to input how you’re feeling. It’ll then recommend meditations and videos tailored to how you feel. I especially love this app because it includes a Learn section that describes the neuroscience and physiology behind meditation!

10% Happier: This app is for “fidgety skeptics.” It’s more about sharpening your mind through meditation than it is about the spiritual aspect. I like this app because it was created by Dan Harris, who’s a news anchor who had a panic attack on live TV that pushed him to pursue meditation. He’s just like the rest of us busy guys. Let his breaking point be your learning point.

You can also try ASMR videos. Go on YouTube and search ASMR, and click on a video that speaks to you. ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) is a tingling sensation on the skin, typically in the head and upper back. It’s spurred by certain sounds, words, and “personal attention,” and it’s shown to have a seriously relaxing effect on a lot of people. It helps bring you into the present moment by focusing on one specific task. It’s not for everyone, but it’s worth a shot to see if it will help you chill out or fall asleep.

Need help ? Here’s an in-depth resource incorporating meditation into your bedtime routine.

Let’s meditate

The purpose of mindful meditation is to bring you into the beauty of the moment. There is always something you can be thankful for. When we’re in the present, we release the anxieties of the past, the future, and the self. We acknowledge the world around us. This helps reduce stress and mental chatter, but it also has a serious scientific impact on the brain. You’re literally training your brain to think critically, creatively, and clearly. You’re training your brain to let go of stressful thoughts and accept positive ones.

Try meditation once a day, 5 minutes a day, for 30 days. You will have a clearer mind, less stress, and better outlook on life. This will radiate into every facet of your life from your work to relationships to exercise to hobbies and beyond!

Who’s devoted to their mental and physical health? Make the commitment to yourself to try the 30-day meditation challenge to watch your health take a huge turn for the better!

neuroscience of meditation

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You’ll get access to a genetic-based report and analysis, along with a private consultation that will put you on track to your ultimate health.

With the Male 2.0 Method, I test your DNA, interpret the results, and create a customized strategy just for you. This plan is specific to YOUR individual genes and lifestyle.  It will improve every area of your life, from your health and professional productivity to your overall longevity and total wellbeing. Male 2.0 gives you the actionable tools you need right now.  It reveals what you need to customize and design your future limitless self.

Click here to learn more about the lifelong benefits of a personalized genetics consultation and epigenetic coaching program.

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I look forward to working with you to take your health goals to the next level.

COMING SOON TO AMAZON

In Male 2.0™, Dr. Tracy Gapin has turned everything we once thought we knew about men’s health and performance upside down. The old model of how to be “a man” is broken. A man who works himself to death. A man who tries to NOT get sick but isn’t really healthy either. A man who takes a pill for every ill but is never really cured. That was Male 1.0. Now, imagine being THE MAN ─ owning your performance in the bedroom, the weight room, and the boardroom. Living a fully optimized life. Becoming limitless. This is Male 2.0!

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS  is a board-certified Urologist, Men’s Health Expert, Author, and Professional Speaker. Using state-of-the-art biometric monitoring, nutrition and lifestyle intervention, Dr. Gapin coaches Fortune 500 executives and evolutionary leaders of business, sports medicine, and high performance. He specializes in cutting-edge precision medicine with an emphasis on epigenetics, providing men with a personalized path to optimizing health & performance. www.SmartMensHealth.com 

30-Day Prostate Health Challenge For Prostate Cancer Awareness Month


Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in the United States. One in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives. And one in 100 men over age 60 will have prostate cancer by their 70th birthday.

Don’t be a statistic. Don’t put yourself at risk. Monitor your prostate health.

Although prostate cancer is common, you can reduce your risk. A healthy lifestyle can help you avoid serious diseases like prostate cancer, heart disease, and even erectile dysfunction.

September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, which means it’s the perfect time to regain your sexual health and wellbeing. Whether you’re one of the 3 million men living through prostate cancer or you’re looking to reduce your risk of developing prostate cancer moving forward, we’ll give you some easy steps you can take to invigorate your sexual wellness.

In honor of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, we’ve created the ultimate 30-Day Prostate Health Challenge.

These 30 tips will help you:

  •     Reduce your risk of prostate cancer
  •     Lose weight
  •     Increase your libido
  •     Revitalize your overall health
  •     Enhance your energy and vitality

We challenge you to follow these 30 tips this month and beyond, so you can look, feel, and be your healthiest self.

We recommend that you implement one tip per day. Then, you should keep these lifestyle changes up for at least 30 days. After 30 days, you start to create a habit—and healthy habits create a healthy life!

So, for example, if you stop smoking on day 15… We challenge you to keep up with it for another whole month, not just for the remaining 15 days.

We make our “30-day challenge” into a faux “60-day challenge” on purpose.

The longer you follow the challenge, the more likely these changes will “stick.” You don’t want to fall back into your old, unhealthy, low-energy lifestyle once September is over. You don’t want this to just be another “fad” that comes and goes… and you don’t want to end up with the same unhealthy habits you’ve always had.

You want to finally live the healthy, vigorous life you’ve dreamed of.

And you want these changes to actually reduce your risk of prostate cancer. And fighting cancer is, unfortunately, a lifelong fight, which means you need to make serious changes that show a true difference.

So let’s get to improving your prostate health!

Day 1 – Evaluate your risk.

All men are at risk for prostate cancer. But it doesn’t hurt to evaluate your personal risk to better understand how your lifestyle choices can reduce your predisposed threat.

The purpose of evaluating your risk is not to scare you—it’s to prepare you!

What are the risk factors for prostate cancer?

  • Age: Prostate cancer is more common after age 50, and the risk increases with every decade of life.
  • Race: African-Americans tend to have the highest risk and severity. Asian men (in Asia) tend to have the lowest risk, but their risk increases if they move to the west.
  • Genetics: Those with a father or brother with prostate cancer have a twofold increase in risk themselves.
  • Location: Risk is significantly higher in the United States than in Asia. Studies also show that men who live north of 40 degrees latitude have a higher risk of dying from prostate cancer (likely due to decreased vitamin D levels).

If you have any of these risk factors, don’t fret. The following 30 tips can help you reduce your risk of prostate cancer so you can take control of and improve your own health.

Day 2 – Visit your doctor about your prostate health.


When was the last time you got a checkup?

You should be visiting your doctor at least once a year for a physical. This ensures your doctor can catch any potential problems before they become serious.

Talk to your doctor about any risk factors for prostate cancer. If you are over 50, your doctor will likely start testing your PSA levels.

PSA (prostate-specific antigen) can help determine whether or not you are currently at risk for prostate cancer. PSA levels have been linked to the onset and aggressiveness of prostate cancer. In general, low levels mean low risk of cancer right now, but this could change. If you have high levels, your doctor will want to do a biopsy to check for cancer.

Don’t fear the doctor. They’re there to keep you healthy so you can live a long and fruitful life!

Learn more here: What Does A High PSA REALLY Mean?

Day 3 – Create a plan to reduce your risk of prostate cancer.

Now that you know your risk and have talked to your doctor, it’s time to create a “lifestyle change” plan. You want to start with clear objectives for your health, so you can create a course of action.

We’ve made this step easy for you! We’re giving you 30 tips and tricks to take back your health. So all you need to do is commit.

Today, we want you to come up with your intrinsic motivators to stick to this plan.

Why are you making this change?

Write: “I am changing my lifestyle because I want…”

For example, “I am changing my lifestyle because I want to live long enough to see my grandchildren grow up.” Or, “I am changing my lifestyle because I want to accomplish more in my business.”

Have a clear objective and goal that will keep you going.

Then, create a plan of action. What do you personally need to do to stick to these lifestyle changes?

Maybe you need to put post-it notes on your mirror. Perhaps you need to create a competition with your friends or maybe you need to have your wife watching you like a hawk.

Write down what will keep you accountable, so you can focus on meeting your long-term health goals and objectives.

With health, you’ve never actually “attained” your goal, which can be frustrating, so you need a way to stay motivated even during the tough days.

Day 4 – Talk to your partner.


If you are going to make lifestyle changes, you want your family, friends, and partner onboard with you. This keeps you motivated and dedicated, while also helping to keep you accountable—even on the days, you don’t want to stick the course.

Plus, your partner is likely also concerned about your health and wellbeing. Talk to them about your risks and doctor visit, so they feel they are on this journey with you.

Health is not something you should hide, especially from those you love. They’ll appreciate that you’re taking steps to be healthier—for yourself and for them.

Read: Does My Husband Have Prostate Cancer?

Day 5 – Clean your pantry.

Now you want to do a cleanout of your pantry so you can fill it with prostate-healthy foods.

Start by getting rid of anything processed. If its expiration date is more than 6 months from the time of purchasing, get rid of it. These sorts of packaged, processed foods contain chemicals and toxins that are known to cause cancer (carcinogens).

Whole foods are the best way to keep your organs and cells healthy. They provide legitimate nutrients that your body needs to fight off disease and cancer.

You really are what you eat—so eat good stuff!

Day 6 – Focus on plants, not meat.

I don’t believe in completely cutting meat out of your diet. However, meats—especially red meats—are high in fats. A diet of unhealthy fats has been linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer.

Plus, a plant-based diet generally provides your body with a greater range of necessary nutrients, especially antioxidants (which fight free radical diseases that cause cancer).

So, stick to plants the majority of the time. When eating meat, choose lean cuts like poultry (chicken and turkey). Make sure your meats, especially beef, are grass-fed and organic to reduce the hormones going into your body.

Day 7 – Eat 2 cups of fruits and veggies.

You want to get at least 2 cups of fruits and veggies every day. These plants are full of vitamins and nutrients that can help reduce prostate cancer. They’re also low in calories and fat, so a plant-based diet can also help you maintain a healthy weight.

Two easy ways to make sure you’re getting your fruits and veggies:

  1. Every plate should be filled with at least 70% plants.
  2. Have at least one snack of fruits or veggies per day.

Not sure how to get more fruits and veggies in your diet?

Check out N1 Performance Health–  a personalized men’s health and performance program designed to radically upgrade your health.

Day 8 – Get your tomatoes.

All fruits and veggies are good for you, but tomatoes hold a special place in the fight against prostate cancer. Tomatoes are high in lycopene, which is a carotenoid that has been linked to a reduced risk of prostate cancer. The lycopene in tomatoes and tomato paste can help reduce the inflammation that causes cancer. Although the research still isn’t 100% proven, eating more tomatoes definitely doesn’t hurt.

Learn more: Will Lycopene Improve My Prostate Health & Fight Prostate Cancer?

Day 9 – Go for a walk.  


Physical activity is directly linked to reduced risk of cancer. In fact, frequent exercise can actually de-methylate your genes, which can help “turn off” those genes that put us at risk for cancer and tumor growth! A high BMI or weight has been linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer, while leaner men have a lower risk.

Walking every day helps get your body moving while also releasing stress. It can also help you shed extra pounds, increase muscle mass, and boost metabolism. Just a little bit of exercise can show major results!

Day 10 – Drink wine.  

Western Europeans have lower rates of prostate cancer because of their Mediterranean diet. This diet has major cancer-fighting properties that we can learn from.

One part of this diet is red wine. The skin of red grapes have resveratrol, which is an antioxidant that’s proven to fight against the growth of cancer. Red wine has also been linked to a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Stick to one glass of red wine every day or every other day. Drinking too much can actually neutralize any beneficial effects and start to do more harm than good.

Day 11 – Cut the alcohol.  

Wait a minute… Didn’t we just say to drink wine?

Yup! But only one glass to get the necessary resveratrol. Studies show that overconsumption of alcohol may worsen your risk of cancer. Keep the consumption low to avoid hurting your genes and putting you at risk for disease.

Did you know that beer is estrogenic? That’s right, the hops in beer actually mimic estrogen in the body. This can lower your testosterone levels, which is in turn linked to increased risk of prostate cancer.

Day 12 – Eat more fish.  

Another part of the cancer-fighting Mediterranean diet is fish. Fish have omega-3 fatty acids, which are “good fats” that can keep your testosterone high while clearing out your arteries. The consumption of fish has been linked to a reduced risk of prostate cancer.

The fish with the most omega-3s are sardines, tuna, mackerel, trout, and salmon. Eating a dish with these even once a week can help slow the growth of cancer cells.

Can’t stand the fishy flavor? Fish oil supplements can help you get those necessary fatty acids as well. Flaxseed is another source of omega-3s.    

Day 13 – Avoid Dairy

Some studies have shown that men who eat a lot of dairy products have the highest risk of developing prostate cancer. Although results have been varied, there are a number of studies that tell us dairy isn’t great for our bodies.

Plus, dairy is high in calcium… and high levels of calcium may actually increase prostate cancer risk. Some studies have found that consuming a lot of calcium may increase the risk and severity of prostate cancer.

So make the commitment to avoid dairy. Swap your coffee creamer for almond milk. Try out veggie cheese in your homemade omelets. It’s easier than ever to go dairy-free at home and in restaurants.

(You can treat yourself to pizza every once in a while… but only if you make an effort to avoid milk, cheese, and other dairy products on other days.)

Day 14 – Boost your vitamin D levels.   

Avoiding dairy can help lower your risk of prostate cancer… But it can also hurt your vitamin D levels. And you need strong vitamin D in order to live a healthy life. In fact, low vitamin D has been linked to aggressive prostate cancer. There is a direct relationship: the lower the vitamin D levels, the more aggressive the prostate cancer.

The best way to get your vitamin D is sunlight. Just 10 minutes of exposure to sunlight can give you your entire vitamin D dosage for the day. After 10 minutes, make sure you put sunscreen on to prevent burns or skin damage.

Fatty fish like tuna, mackerel, and salmon also have vitamin D. Beef liver and foods fortified with vitamin D are also possible.

If you’re still not getting enough vitamin D, talk to your doctor about finding a healthy supplement that will work for you.

Day 15 – Stop smoking.   

Smoking impacts almost every area of your life. The toxins and chemicals found in cigarettes (and cigars) can do serious, irreversible damage to your organs and cells. Specifically, research shows that smokers have a more aggressive form of prostate cancer and a greater risk of recurrence.

But studies have shown that prostate cancer patients who quit smoking for more than 10 years have the same mortality risk than those who have never smoked. So you can lower your risk of cancer and other serious diseases by quitting today.

Make the commitment!

Day 16 – Drink coffee.   

Coffee has been a medical “mystery” for some time—is it or is it not good for you? 

In terms of prostate cancer, coffee might actually be a potential help. Some research has found that every three cups of coffee you drink can help reduce the risk of fatal prostate cancer by 11%. An Italian study found that three cups of coffee every day reduced prostate cancer risk by 53% compared to drinking zero to two cups daily.

Interestingly, though, how you prepare the coffee may matter. For example, in Italy, they don’t use a filter. In a Norwegian study, men who drank boiled water (without a filter) had a lower risk of prostate cancer than those who drank coffee with a filter. This is likely because cafestol and kahweol, which are coffee’s known cancer-fighting chemicals, may get trapped in the filters while the coffee is brewing. So, drink fresh, boiled coffee if you want to see the cancer-fighting effects.

However, it’s still important to note that too much coffee has its downsides too. This can lead to seizures, heart problems, migraines, adrenal fatigue, and more. These risks are amplified if you are on any medications. So talk to your doctor about how to monitor your caffeine intake while reducing your risk of prostate cancer.

Day 17 – Avoid folic acid.   

Studies have looked at the link between folate and prostate cancer. While the research is not yet conclusive, some studies believe folate plays a role in reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Regardless, studies show that folic acid (a man-made form of folate) increases the risk of prostate cancer.

So, while folate is important, you don’t want to supplement it with folic acid in order to get your daily dose of folate. Instead, get your folate through green vegetables, beans, and orange juice.

Day 18 – Exercise at least 3 hours weekly.  

This is everyone’s favorite tip… exercise. But working out has immense benefits that you can’t ignore. From stress reduction to improved sleep to lowered cardiovascular and respiratory disease risks, exercise really is a cure-all for a number of ailments. It has even been shown to “turn off” those genes that are predisposed to cancer, leaving you with healthier genes and lower risk.

Studies especially show that working out can reduce your risk of prostate cancer. This is likely because exercise lowers inflammation, improves immune function, and raises levels of natural antioxidants—which work together to fight against cancer.

It doesn’t really matter what exercise you do—as long as you get your heart rate up. I typically recommend high-intensity interval training (HIIT) because it helps burn fat and boost testosterone fast.

Day 19 – Lower your stress.    

Stress is the modern-day plague. It is directly correlated to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and even cancer. Stress has especially been linked to incidence and aggressiveness of prostate cancer. Stress can actually manipulate your genes in a way that makes you susceptible to disease; in reverse,  reducing stress can actually make you more immune to sickness.

Ways to lower stress include:

  •     Exercise (see “Day 16”)
  •     Meditation
  •     Yoga
  •     Breathing techniques
  •     Sex
  •     Spending time with family, friends
  •     Picking up a hobby
  •     Getting rid of the stressor
  •     Talking to a professional

Learn more about the impacts of stress here.

Day 20 – Get your zinc.    

Zinc is found in all of our body’s organs and fluids, but it has an especially high concentration in the prostate tissue. This has led researchers to look at the impact of zinc levels on prostate diseases and cancer. There have been conflicting results, and often they come down to the conclusion: we’re still not sure.

So, while the question is up in the air, there’s one thing that we can be sure of: we need zinc. It’s necessary for all of our organs’ functions, and low zinc can be detrimental to health. Zinc plays an especially critical role in sexual health.

But there’s something else we know: zinc supplementation could very well increase prostate cancer risk. Studies show that zinc vitamins contain chemicals that could be linked to cancer.

So you want to get your zinc, but you want to get it naturally through the foods you eat. Oysters are especially high in zinc, as are other types of seafood like crabs and lobster. You can also get zinc in poultry, red meat, beans, nuts, and whole grains.

Day 21 – Throw out your multivitamins.    

While we’re on the subject of supplementation, it’s time to get rid of those one-a-day multivitamins. Multivitamins are chock full of vitamins—or so they claim. They actually contain a lot of chemical derivatives that look like vitamins, but your body can’t fully absorb them. You end up wasting your money while potentially adding more toxins to your body.

Studies have even looked at the impact of multivitamins and prostate cancer specifically. One study found that men who took multivitamins were 32% more likely to develop advanced prostate cancer and 98% more likely to die from the disease.

While the relationship is still unclear, it’s best to avoid multivitamins. Instead, focus on getting a well-rounded diet. If you need additional supplementation, take individual organic vitamins for each need, as opposed to “catch-all” multivitamins.

Day 22 – Get your isoflavones.    


Studies show that isoflavones may play a protective role against the development of prostate cancer. This is likely because isoflavones may fight off carcinogens, especially in the tissues of the body (like the prostate tissue).

You can find isoflavone concentrations in:

  •     Tofu (soybeans)
  •     Chickpeas
  •     Lentils
  •     Alfalfa sprouts
  •     Peanuts
  •     Green tea

Green tea is especially full of antioxidants that can help fight off prostate cancer. Add a few more isoflavones to your salads or meat dishes to get those protective effects!

Check out N1 Performance Health–  a personalized men’s health and performance program designed to radically upgrade your health.

Day 23 – Focus on healthy fats.     

You can prevent prostate cancer through diet—especially if you eat a lot of healthy fats. This might be because a diet high in healthy fats helps boost testosterone production, and high testosterone levels are linked to lower risk of prostate cancer.

Focus on plant-based fats as opposed to animal fats. This gives you a strong testosterone base without increasing your risk of prostate cancer (like animal fats might).

Add these healthy fats to your diet to start seeing optimal sexual health:

  •     Olive oil
  •     Avocado
  •     Dark chocolate
  •     Eggs
  •     Fatty fish (trout, salmon, mackerel, sardines, herring)
  •     Nuts
  •     Chia seeds
  •     Coconut oil
  •     Yogurt

Day 24 – Have sex.     


Sex is one of my favorite prescriptions— not only because it’s fun, but it’s also good for you. Sex is a great form of exercise and it reduces stress while improving sleep quality. Plus, studies show that men who ejaculate more frequently have a lower risk of prostate cancer.

That’s right—sex may help protect against prostate cancer. One study found that men who ejaculated (sex and masturbation included) 21 or more times a month had a 33% lower risk of prostate cancer compared to men who only report four to seven ejaculations per month. Other studies have reiterated similar findings.

The reason for this link is unclear, but it may have to do with “emptying” the prostate of any harmful substances and chemicals. Think of ejaculation as a prostate cleanse.

So go get busy! Tell your partner it’s necessary for your health.

Day 25 – Add spices to your diet.

Researchers at the Center for Holistic Urology in NYC recently discovered that herbs and spices may be able to fight against prostate cancer. They blended together ginger, oregano, rosemary, and green tea, and they found that it actually reduced prostate-cancer cell growth by 78%.

While you can purchase these blends, you can also just add more of these prostate-happy herbs to your diet. These spices are healthy and delicious additions to your diet that can help improve your overall health:

  •     Ginger
  •     Turmeric
  •     Cayenne
  •     Garlic
  •     Saffron
  •     Black cumin
  •     Black pepper

Day 26 – Know the signs and symptoms of prostate cancer.     


The best way to prevent aggressive or fatal prostate cancer is to catch it early. Unfortunately, there often aren’t signs of prostate cancer that can instantly clue you into your health. The only real way to diagnose prostate cancer is a PSA test and biopsy with your doctor.

Nevertheless, there are some ways to keep an eye out for changes in your body that could indicate prostate cancer. Potential symptoms of prostate cancer include:

  •     Pain while urinating
  •     Difficulty stopping or starting urine stream
  •     Increase in urination frequency
  •     Diminished urinary stream
  •     A sensation of incomplete bladder emptying
  •     Blood in urine
  •     Painful ejaculation
  •     Blood in semen

If you’re frequently getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, you might want to talk to your doctor about a PSA test. Learn more about how to spot prostate cancer early here.

Day 27 – Control your genes.

Did you know that you have control over your genetic expression? Certain lifestyle choices can actually put you at risk for cancer—while others can minimize your risk!

It can often feel challenging to control our health. We have some semblance of control at work, in our relationships, and over our personality—but health often feels out of our control.

But this is proven incorrect. You can fight your genetics. You do have control over your health. Your body is yours!  

Click to learn more about the role between your genes and cancer—and what you can do about it.

Day 28 – Retire today.    

Yes, I’m telling you to retire today! But not actually…

We all have a “work to retire” or “work for the weekend” mindset. But this is actually stressing you out more, which could be increasing your risk for cancer.

Plus, studies show that retirement can actually kill us. The moment you stop working, your body starts to deteriorate, especially if you retire at a young age.

So, I’m telling you to retire today, meaning you need to find something that you’re going to love doing every day so you aren’t wishing and hoping for retirement. This might mean a new career path, a new company, or a new hobby. You want to find something that will make you passionate and excited every day—not dreading life “until” retirement.

Whatever you’ve always wanted to do when you retire—start doing it now instead. This will make you less stressed, happier, and less likely to go into “retirement” at a young age.

Stay youthful and stay vibrant…starting right now!

Day 29 – Don’t freak out (it’s treatable).     

The best thing you can do for your health is to take care of it—not worry about it. The more you obsess, the more you make it a reality. Instead, obsess about living a healthy life—not about preventing cancer.

Best yet, prostate cancer is curable, especially when detected and treated early. In fact, more than 90% of prostate cancers are detected early enough for cure. The 5-year survival rate in the U.S. is 99%. If diagnosed, you can and will survive!

That means you don’t need to freak out about a prostate cancer diagnosis. This just means you need to keep up with your lifestyle changes and visit your doctor regularly so you can keep tabs on anything going on with your health.

Day 30 – Follow the course.  

This is a lot to keep track of. You have 30 tips and tricks to help lower risk of prostate cancer and keep your health strong.

So how do you stick to it?

Most of us aren’t disciplined enough to do it alone. We keep up with something for a week or so, and then these “habits” quickly fall to the wayside (like all of our other diets and fads).

To make these lifestyle changes that will show long-term results, you need accountability.

You need someone watching to make sure you follow through on your promises.

We are that someone – the Gapin Institute for Men’s Health and Performance.

With G1 Performance Health,  we’ll give you in-depth info about how to take control of your sexual and overall health. You’ll get a genetic-based report and analysis, along with a private consultation to set you on the right track.

Don’t do it alone. Our individually tailored-coaching will give you step-by-step instructions to make these lifestyle changes stick.

Follow my course and you’ll see major results, guaranteed.

Let’s get started!

Schedule a Call

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How To Lose Weight For Healthy Testosterone Levels


Testosterone levels and body fat are intimately linked. High testosterone equals lower body fat. Low testosterone equals higher body fat.

But why does this relationship exist? Where does it come from?

And how can you overcome it to lose weight and boost testosterone?

The four-way relationship

Testosterone plays a role in everything from body and facial hair to a deeper voice. Testosterone is the hormone that makes you “manly.”

But that’s not all testosterone does. Testosterone is also a critical hormone in controlling weight and building muscle (for both males and females).

There are four ways that testosterone and weight gain are linked. Let’s delve into this intricate relationship below before getting into why they’re linked—and how you can lose weight for healthy T levels this month.

1. Low testosterone causes weight gain.

A common side effect of low testosterone is weight gain. In fact, if you have fast and unusual weight gain, your doctor will likely first test your testosterone levels. Even women who have low testosterone levels will start to gain weight at a faster rate.

Low testosterone especially causes weight gain around the midsection. If you’re getting a gut for the first time in your life, it could be low T!

2. Weight gain lowers testosterone.

Obesity impacts quality of life and shortens life expectancy overall. Weight influences every part of your body, from cardiovascular health to brain health to endocrine health.

Weight gain even affects how your hormones are produced. In fact, gaining weight can almost instantly lower your body’s production of testosterone.

So if you’ve started suffering from low testosterone symptoms, you need to look at the scale. A recent weight gain could be the stimulus of your low T levels.

3. Testosterone therapy boosts weight loss.

Studies show that testosterone therapy can improve body composition and quality of life. Most importantly, research has found that boosting testosterone can have an impact on obesity—with or without other lifestyle modifications.

This means that testosterone plays a critical role in metabolism and belly fat regardless of other typical lifestyle factors.

Boosting your testosterone can assist your weight loss efforts in tandem.

4. Weight loss encourages testosterone production.

When you gain weight, your testosterone lowers. But, if you lose weight, testosterone production increases.

In fact, weight is the first barrier to boosting testosterone levels. You could do everything else right, but if your weight stays the same, your testosterone levels will stay the same. The most effective way to boost your testosterone production is by losing belly fat.

Putting it together

What do these four statements mean?

That weight loss and testosterone are inextricably linked. Low testosterone causes weight gain, and weight gain lowers the production of testosterone. In reverse, boosting testosterone can assist with weight loss, and losing weight can improve T production.

This can either put you in a positive testosterone-weight cycle… or a negative one.

Let’s take a look at where this cyclical relationship comes from—so we can figure out how to get you in a positive T cycle this month!

What causes the testosterone and weight relationship?

The exact reason that testosterone impacts weight is still up in the air. Experts can definitively prove a relationship—but they’re not 100% sure where that relationship comes from.

Still, we have a few pretty good guesses about how the two are linked.

1. Hormone levels

Body fat is directly linked to estrogen. Fat tissue actually contains an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. Moreover, aromatase has been linked to weight gain, aging, and disease.  

Estrogen is the antithesis of testosterone. When the body has extra estrogen floating around, it slows the production of testosterone.

So, having more body fat increases aromatase. Aromatase transforms your free-floating testosterone into estrogen. And having more estrogen further slows your testosterone production. When the production of testosterone is slower, it causes you to accumulate even more belly fat.

That’s why it can be so challenging to raise testosterone levels if you’re carrying around extra weight. Even if you supplement with testosterone replacement therapy, your belly fat starts to metabolize all of the extra testosterone and convert it to estrogen. That estrogen encourages your body to hold on to even more fat.

2. Muscle synthesis


Testosterone plays an important role in building muscle. Studies show that testosterone increases the body’s ability to produce protein and muscle mass. Low testosterone can cause a reduction in lean muscle, while high testosterone can help you bulk up quickly.

Having more muscle actually helps you lose weight. Lean muscle actually burns more calories throughout the day than fat does. That’s because your body needs energy to fuel the movement of your muscles—and it gets that energy from your caloric intake. Your belly fat doesn’t move (except when it jiggles), so it doesn’t require any energy or calories.

Testosterone is the key hormone in protein synthesis (aka building muscle). If you have low testosterone, your body isn’t able to build muscle. In fact, research shows men with low T tend to have less muscle mass than men with normal T levels.

So, no matter how much you lift, low testosterone levels can prevent your body from creating the protein it needs to build muscle. In turn, you’re not seeing the fat burning benefits of having lean muscle on the body.

You’ll lose muscle and gain fat!

3. Metabolism

Testosterone actually plays a critical role in metabolism. Metabolism is the process of turning your food into energy and fuel. One study found that men undergoing T therapy had an increased metabolic rate and lower body mass.

How does this work? Testosterone actually interacts with insulin and “eats” extra glucose. It can actually remove the glucose that would otherwise be stored as fat cells in the body. This can help prevent weight gain by getting rid of extra sugar that turns into fat.

So you need high testosterone to keep your metabolism functioning. If you don’t have this, your metabolism slows down. A slow metabolism means that more of your calories are converted to fat rather than energy. This can cause you to gain weight—especially around the midsection.

Boosting your testosterone, though, can help improve your metabolism, which helps you use up more of your food as fuel—rather than as fat.

4. Cortisol


Cortisol is the “stress hormone,” and it actually increases weight gain. That’s because cortisol is released as a response to stress and low blood sugar. Cortisol is released to raise blood sugar in response to some stressor. The sugar in your bloodstream needs to go somewhere… and it ends up in your gut as fatty tissue.

Cortisol also causes gluconeogenesis, which is when your body turns its proteins (muscles) into glucose. Basically, cortisol causes your body to turn muscles into fat.

Testosterone and cortisol have an inverse relationship. Both cortisol and testosterone require pregnenolone for production. If cortisol levels are high, there isn’t enough pregnenolone to produce testosterone—and vice versa.

If your testosterone is low, cortisol can run rampant—which boosts blood sugar and gluconeogenesis. But high testosterone steals away from cortisol production to minimize this stress-related weight gain.

5. Motivation

Common side effects of low testosterone include lethargy, low energy, and poor mood. This can make you less motivated to get up and go to the gym. It may even make you less motivated to throw the ball around with your kids or go to the beach with your buddies.

Low T can you less interested in activities that you once cared about—and likely that’s making you more of a couch potato than an active banana. A stagnant lifestyle can cause you to gain weight, which further lowers your testosterone.

Even worse, the most common side effect of low testosterone is a lowered libido. This makes you less interested in sex—and sex is one of the best ways to burn calories and lose weight. If you’re having sex less frequently, you could actually be cutting out one of your body’s historical methods of burning calories and blasting fat.   

6. Age

I’d like to address the topic of age and weight gain for a second.

We all start to pack on the pounds as we get older. We all think that gaining weight is a natural part of aging. And, in some ways, it is. But a lot of this actually comes down to our mindset about weight gain. We think that it’s okay to gain weight as we age because everyone does it.

But it’s not the number on your birthday cake that determines the number on the scale. It comes down to lifestyle. We sit behind our desks without ever moving. We workout less frequently. We stress more. We sleep less.

As we age, we start to fall into habits that encourage weight gain. We assume that it’s because we’re getting older—but it’s really because we’re stuck in the mindset that age equals weight gain.

But you can break this mindset. You have to break this mindset. You need to lose weight in order to boost your testosterone and vice versa.

And you can break it this week, so you can start to take control of your health once again—no matter your age.

How to lose weight for boosted T

There’s a vicious cycle that comes into play here. Low testosterone causes weight gain. And extra belly fat lowers testosterone. This creates a feedback cycle of low T levels and high weight gain that can be hard to break.

Because of this cycle, your typical diet and exercise don’t always work.

So if you’ve been feeling like your weight loss efforts are proving futile… you might be right.

No matter how much you diet or exercise, you could still get stuck in this cycle.

I’m going to give you ways to break through this cycle so you can start seeing results.

The solution is to boost testosterone while losing weight. Because if you boost testosterone but still have belly fat, the fat will metabolize all the extra testosterone. And if you lose some weight but still have low testosterone, the low T levels can cause you to gain that weight right back.

So we need to kill two birds with one stone.

How do you do this? You need to create a plan.


Losing weight and boosting your testosterone needs to be a goal that you set for yourself. You can’t just say, “I’m going to lose weight this year.” Because you could lose a pound and that’s losing weight—but nothing actually changes!

You need to create a specific goal…and then you need a plan for meeting that goal.

  • How much weight do you need to lose?
  • How much do you need to bump up your testosterone? How will you reach these numbers?
  • I recommend working with a doctor to come up with this plan.

I’m a doctor with a proven, customizable plan that’s tailored specifically to you…

Do you want to jumpstart a plan that has proven results?

Do you want to start boosting your testosterone and taking control of your vitality this month?

CONCLUSION

It’s time to get empowered to take control of your health. Unlock the code to peak performance with the Male Method™ to regain your energy, focus and confidence and feel like a man again. 

We take a whole-body, epigenetic approach to health, focusing on all inputs and how they affect the human system. With the Male 2.0 Method, we utilize science-based precision medicine, personalizing your health based on your unique genetic blueprint. No more guessing!

We utilize cutting-edge age management protocols to reverse the aging process and expand longevity. And we track and leverage your biometric data using state-of-the-art wearable technology to truly optimize your health.

Ready to take the next steps?

Download the Blueprint

Schedule a Call

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In Male 2.0™, Dr. Tracy Gapin has turned everything we once thought we knew about men’s health and performance upside down. The old model of how to be “a man” is broken. A man who works himself to death.  Unfortunately, a man who tries to NOT get sick but isn’t really healthy either.  And a man who takes a pill for every ill but is never really cured. That was Male 1.0. Now, imagine being THE MAN ─ owning your performance in the bedroom, the weight room, and the boardroom. Living a fully optimized life. Becoming limitless. This is Male 2.0! Available on Amazon.

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS  is a board-certified Urologist,  world renowned Men’s Health & Performance Expert, Author, and Professional Speaker. Using state-of-the-art biometric monitoring, nutrition and lifestyle intervention, Dr. Gapin coaches Fortune 500 executives and evolutionary leaders of business, sports medicine, and high performance. He specializes in cutting-edge precision medicine with an emphasis on epigenetics, providing men with a personalized path to optimizing health & performance. www.GapinInstitute.com

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